ABOVE: C40-9W No. 9023 leads a train south across the Florida Northern on a diamond at the Ocala station. Ocala’s Amtrak service is provided by a connecting bus. The covered hoppers on the train are heading to the phos- phate region of Bone Valley. The route is also used by CSX’s Orange Juice Train that carries Tropicana’s best from southern Florida express to New Jersey.
The next day we were finally in Florida. We stopped at Ocala, where Florida Northern (a look-alike sister to the Pinsley-operated Florida Central) has a small yard. We found Florida Central GP9 No. 60 working the CSX inter- change early in the morning, and fol- lowed it back to the yard.
Once in the yard, the locomotive headed west out of town to deliver a car to an industry. The line runs through backyards much of the way and is somewhat inaccessible
for photogra-
phy, but we were able to find a nice shot of the train returning, framed up by some Spanish moss.
The railroad forms a backwards “L,” with the branch it was on being the base. Soon after turning north, the train entered the yard again, and con- tinued through up the north side of the “L” to pull cars from a scrap dealer. The
train made for a nice shot as it entered the yard on the return trip.
Florida Northern also has a line that heads south, crossing CSX on a dia- mond at the Ocala passenger station before doing a few blocks of street run- ning. Alas, the railroad did not run this direction on the day we were there, but CSX polished the diamonds with sever- al trains, including a southbound led by C40-9W No. 9023. The CSX trackage in Ocala is ex-Seaboard Air Line, coming down from Waycross to the north and continuing on to the phosphate region of Bone Valley east of Tampa. With our arrival in Florida, our mis- sion was accomplished. We headed to the Orlando airport and flew home. While we hated to leave the warmth of Florida, however, we knew that the car had to come back to New Jersey in March. Another road trip on the way!
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