Industry Recap

For anyone following the business and logistics side of railroading, some decent news; all mixed, mashed, and in no particular order:

Train 195 is on duty on the FEC here and there. This attests to some stable rock demand. I just don't know how often it runs though, about once weekly to my recollection.
Nailite Plastics on the CSX line near Golden Glades, Florida, a place where I see two to three cars, had about six on industry. Allsteel & Gypsum also had gypsum centerbeams waiting for a pickup; I don't recount seeing any coil cars though.
It's nice to see that the cut of O717's cars sitting in Fort Lauderdale is consistently 10-12 cars in length. Cars from Amerigas, Boise-Cascade, Cross-Dock, and Home Depot were seen much to my memory. Maybe one Fast-Dry in there as well.
Thursday's O721 (Homestead Subdivison local) had an ample amount of centerbeam flats (about four from two day's worth of trains) and plenty of hoppers, open and covered, all heading back to Hialeah. The entire train, which looked like a clean house job for the Homestead Sub, totalled about 30 cars. Expect to see the slack on tonight's (tomorrow morning's) Q452.
The only bad news, SALCO on the East Rail came up empty---again. Abandoned customer? Oh well. But I saw a video of a mid-week Q452 and it had a decent cut of scrap from the Downtown Spur.

Rail Sign Epic Fail

This is probably the most misleading sign I've ever seen. It's at the Florida East Coast Railway grade crossing on SW 2nd Street/Himmarshee Blvd in Fort Lauderdale, FL. It's supposed to warn the millions of trespassers that cross tracks illegally and play chicken with the train in Fort Lauderdale that they're in the track area, but it's telling them not to stop? The hell? Pretty much, it goes against the purpose built crossing protection that is in front of them. Talk about an Epic Fail.

I noticed this when getting my faraway shot of FEC Train 101 last night. I haven't watched trains here for about a year, and haven't shot this part of the street in just about as much time if not more. Needless to say, as the fleet-footed (for 30mph, anyway -- but they were making every bit of it) and long intermodal hotshot approached, two idiots played chicken. That's right, they weren't doing anything wrong; they were obeying the sign.

FEC and CSX Rail Business Is Improving Again

The promise of unit ethanol on FEC has finally been delivered. FEC Train 141 ran a solid 81 car unit set with about 20 of those going to Motiva in Port Everglades today and the rest headed to Hialeah. It is possible the rest are for Motiva as well or for Florida Bulk Transfer, but we'll find out. The timing of the extra was so perfect I was able to catch it before having my dinner tonight closer to home!

Aside from that, feeding on Brylon's videos, I've noticed healthy manifest on 123 for Fort Pierce. I am glad to see that even in the death of sugar cane season so much freight is headed for Fort Pierce and West Palm. Also, Lyle caught 121 this morning with a healthy hodgepodge of racks and dead loads.

CSX is doing well also. Q453-21 from Friday night had 101 cars. I caught a subsequent 453 the next day, being in Broward and this one had 51 cars, which is less but the carloads in for the weekend were still good. Though Q453-21 is "watered down" by bad-ordered Yelvington hoppers, the size is still a treat to see and those CYDXs have a destination too. Q452s on Friday and Saturday shot out decent carloads as well. Also with K996, K978, and K790 last week wasn't dead train-wise. Tampa is also getting ethanol well as figured by K422.

Coming into the world out of high school I am happy to see the economy taking shape again... and through one of the biggest ways one can foretell the shape of it, the Railroad.

The Death Bell has Rung for Tri-Rail's Old Engines

HOT OFF THE PRESS:

Brooksville build #818 is out of the shops and looks spiffy in Tri-Rail's palm tree livery, though I'll be honest I would have rather seen it have the colored stripes.

This is a BL36PH, a new Brookville locomotive of which Tri-Rail is a launch customer.
It is also assumed reasonably that this will replace the initial fleet of rebuilds on the roster, 802-811.

TO THE IMAGE (courtesy Tyler White): 

http://www.hostthenpost.org/uploads/fbf71cb18b11bdfa8d8c1c10b0245a2b.jpg

New FEC Customer at Port Everglades

On June 12 FEC has made its first ethanol delivery for a new customer at the port, named Motiva. This area is very high security so one would only be able to view it from the air. In this video you can see it around the 3 minute mark. Two tracks with ethanol loading racks are cut in. Not quite unit train sized but still long. This reflects good news for business and a fulfilled promise, for lack of a better term, as Motiva announced the service two years ago.

Deerfield Beach / O717 Corridor Update

While I'm still waiting on starting the layout in HO Scale, I did pass by the real Deerfield Beach and noticed a couple of promising observations.

I was happy to see that despite seeing the loading docks at Sun-Sentinel to be empty over the past few visits, that the industry as of yesterday had at least 1 boxcar in there.

More so, the really good news relates to CSX winning the ASPX's contract to do their scrap gon loading. I think the mysterious location of where these gons get loaded has been found. The former  station track/ current team track north of Hillsboro Blvd is back in service as a loadout track for the gons. Four or five of them have been sitting there yesterday.

In other industry news, no cars at Allsteel or BrickAmerica. One tank at the water plant. Also when I glanced from I-95 about 4 cars at Fast-Dry had been noticed. Also CSX O722 delivered about 35 cars of freight to Dania, many of them boxcars. My belief is they're headed for Home Depot, Boise-Cascade, and other mix and match areas.

FEC Triple Play! 109, 202 and 965 | June 06 720p

Cesar, local Miami railfan and good friend, was out today in search of trains at FIU's BBC.
Pay particular attention to Train 109, the third catch. This train was abolished sometime in 2011 but only was so until early this year. When they brought it back it would only haul baretables but now it's nice to see the train live up to its former persona and carry rock empties and racks. The coal was a bonus though as that only comes monthly from CSX. The point is I'm glad that the economy is getting back on its feet after all of this and 109 is the sure sign of it. But anyway enjoy this nice classic FEC package!