In the sea of sporadic unit rock trains for Winter Haven and Taft, CSX has managed to finally set up for one at the right time on the stretch of track nearest to my house. K918 is a temporary train of aggregate to fuel the construction of CSX's intermodal facility in Winter Haven.
The train went as a power move westbound around 10:30 PM last Friday by Dolphin Mall and reemerged with 60 loaded hoppers before 1 AM by the same area. I caught it at Galloway as seen below:
I am happy to be seeing this customer kind of back on track, no pun intended. The recent boom of these trains plus a steady flow of unit runners K978 and K977 are keeping this industry active. As I write, another inflow of Florida Rock hoppers is expected by tomorrow morning at latest.
The catch I made last Friday brought back chasing memories from between 2009 and 2011, when I focused on videotaping these trains. Before that, the line was much more active though, getting rock trains almost daily and locals fairly often.
As far as the K918 goes, it is not known if there will be another order for rock for Winter Haven. I frankly thought it would only last one train ful but there were three more since, whereas the first train was loaded late February. K978 and K977 still bring hope for more runs and hopefully one day we will see the return of K974 and K973, the last of which ran June 2011.
Only my fourth unique train catch in South Florida in 2013 (behind FEC 101, CSX Q453, FEC RBBX Circus Train), a K978 with the 5228, 3014 "GEVO Juice", and 66 Florida Rock hoppers straight out of the Lehigh Spur evokes some good and positive feelings.
The train is a sign of hope for the economy and hopefully one of things to come. A Sunday afternoon run, it reminisces the classic O719 which used to run mornings down the Homestead Sub. It actually took the Lehigh though. Here is some background info on FRK in the Lehigh.
Florida Rock on the Lehigh, a quarry at the intersection of NW 25 ST and 127 AV in unincorporated Miami-Dade county has in the past mined train loads of rock. I caught them pretty religiously between 2009 and 2011 on video until the "summer slump" of 2011 where not a train load even bothered to run following June 8's K974. All of the hoppers got sent to Krome Quarry, where the Yelvington trains usually go, and the Taft distributor ordered their aggregate there. I believe the next time they shipped out a train was April 2012 where Tim alerted me, but all I could get was limerock dust as I narrowly missed it.
October 10th came and two AC4400s, 461, 462, came fleeting light on the Lehigh at NW 107 Av as seen from La Carreta. What was just so nice was that that same day, Brooksville Cemex got its first coal train in two years, N036. Some quotes on the FRKX hoppers that day did say that they were placed at Lehigh October 10th, leading me to believe that was why the power came back light. I believe it was either the 12th or 19th that the rock train left, and when it came back, the cars went to Sterling. Here's something interesting though: As FRKX 195 was seen heading that way on the 28th, somehow it went north on a K978 and came to the Lehigh as it was seen yesterday on the K978.
Why did they change their routing? The quarry was sued for some environmental issue and placed on moratorium for a while. It began mining last spring but only a handful of rock trains actually ran.
Here is a flagship video of O721 on the Lehigh Spur with a Florida Rock train in Oct 2010.
Here, towards the end of the package is a video of O721 on the Homestead Sub with the Florida Rock train in 2012 coming from Krome. 11:48 mark.
And here, in broad daylight (rarity), a spiel of photos of the train on January 13, on the Miami Sub. This is the first time since 2007 where I could shoot one of these northbound loaded drags in daylight south of the Miami terminal. I was eating brunch or even barely awake when this thing ran the Lehigh so I caught up to it when it waited on authority to dog P670 into the high iron.
Let's hope that there will be MANY MANY more of these rock trains. Yes, some people may not like to be sitting around waiting at a grade crossing for these to clear, but they are an indicator of how the economy is doing.
Miami is known for it. Chicken sacrifices placed spiritually on a set of railroad tracks, with a Cuban person's bad luck and the expectation that the train crew will pick it up. Now what makes this case particularly interesting is the fact that the chickens I saw are not covered.
It is without a doubt gross to catch one of these sacrifices in plain view. But historically and sociologically, it is utterly fascinating. When spotting on Tuesday, Dec. 11, I managed to see these while running after O721-11, the Sterling Switcher. Belief has it that the crew of Y322-10 ran the chickens over.
It was 9:53 PM when for the first time since April 26, 2012 I have heard a horn on the Lehigh Spur in regular hours. It was an eastbound power move, running as Y220, which had freshly set out a cut of Florida Rock NSC hoppers at Lehigh Spur's very own Florida Rock plant. The spur was reborn.
Information provided by my CSX sources was too vague that evening. Either the power just arrived into Miami or the cars were Progressively Stored in Hialeah. But today, I got the confirming answer that they were "Placed at Industry: Lehigh, FL" after midnight.
Meanwhile, in Tampa, on a similarly fated Brooksville Sub, CSX N036 has brought in the first cut of coal to Cemex in over two years. This action has spurred cheerful conversation on the mailing lists and has brought new hope to business on the line.
Both of these lines, sharply changing from desolate to active, are bringing hope that the economy is recovering. Things are finally getting back to normal, and for that I am very happy.
