Train After Train on the FEC!

rated horses going in Bob Baffert hasn't another horse in inaudible at number five now look at improbable because of probable was going off at about five to one as I turn east on Yamato Road headed into Boca Raton the sky doesn't look any more promising but local rail fan Richard Smith is set up and waiting patiently on the old loading dock at Villa Rica sighting we are railfanning the Florida East Coast Main Line today from Boca Raton to Fort Lauderdale and wherever the action leads us it isn't long before the first train gets here a southbound bright-line commuter train my experience shooting 50 mile-an-hour freights does not serve me well this morning camera too old not enough light shutter speed way too low but it didn't matter Richard had put me on a great spot the trains kept coming Sir Richard Branson has gotten in on this bright line deal paying the railroad for naming rights so many or all of these trains will someday soon carry Virgin Trains USA livery by the time the third bright line train arrived so had Richards friend John Patito along with the morning rain as the rain came down heavier here came what I was really looking for on this trip and fecl in July shot that car in between the two engines is a specially built liquefied natural gas tender the GEVO locomotives run on both diesel and LNG fec has 12 sets of what came with that 121 okay thanks wet that's alright the rain stopped and here came another bright line southbound it was 8:30 now and Richard had to break off so I followed John to a few hotspots on the way south South Florida from West Palm to Homestead is one long skinny town bordered by the seaboard railroad on the west the FEC in the middle and the Atlantic Ocean on the east there are people everywhere you go John knew I liked old stuff so it took me to a park in downtown Deerfield Beach where an old caboose was stuffed and mounted I'm not sure if the color is correct on it but the restorers did a nice job anyway the building called old schoolhouse also caught my eye and looked for the world like an old railroad station to me but it isn't it's an old schoolhouse we drifted on south until we heard another bright line on the radio John led me into a favorite spot of his in Pompano we set up on the sunny side then we were off to catch an FEC local in this part of Broward the FEC more or less traces the Dixie Highway State Road 8:11 when the local hit a stop signal we zipped ahead and into Oakland Park to wait on him all right John that that trains hold him down there nope why do you think he's got the red signal anything that's going on so that's FEC train 960 the pompano local it's going back home back to the full water nail yard call it a night right now it's got that red signal probably cuz there's either a bright line Holden in that bull water no bright line station or the bridge is timed out so the full utter no bridge times out it's a Coast Guard rule they're not allowed to have it down certain number of minutes every hour and so you probably just holdin on that once the bridge gets some time to lower it bring 960 back home after 5 minutes the dispatcher turned him loose check out that advisory sign officials down here are doing everything they can to keep people out of the way of those fast bright line trains John led me into Wilton Manors in Fort Lauderdale a curve where the fec swings to line up for the Fort Lauderdale drawbridge and here came another bright line [Music] alright well that was a cool spot right there we got two bright line trains those guys just run every hour down here so if you if you just set yourself up find yourself a good spot or are a series of spots here on the FEC you can get a bunch of those bright line trains because they run hourly and they are they're just beautiful beautiful trains and it will last very long but beautiful afterward we made our way farther south I didn't want to leave my truck up in Boca and neither did John so that's why we're in separate trucks we are communicating with M urs radio much easier than cell phones John also knew I like bridges of all kinds so our target was the Fort Lauderdale draw bridge when the draw spans started down we knew we'd see a fleet of crossings and here they came the canals of Fort Lauderdale are home to some of the most expensive luxury yachts in the world those who live up the river don't like being held up by draw bridges so the railroad accommodates by trying to group trains across the bridge and limit the closures [Applause] the digital age negates the need for an on-site bridge tender it's all done at the dispatchers desk in Jacksonville the railroad still keeps a person on site whose title is bridge monitor a pair of eyes on the bridge and someone to communicate with boat traffic on VHF radio just in case I had noticed on the radio that the dispatcher kept identifying himself as FDC which stands for Florida dispatch company West Palm FEC railfan Jim Koval ski educated me on this unique set up running commuter and regional trains on a freight railroad brings inherent conflicts so FEC and bright-line created the Florida dispatch company each are 50 percent owners in FDC and it does alter the dispatching and is responsible for making sure each company's priorities are maintained after the freight train we swung over to the Seaboard side at Fort Lauderdale's Amtrak station in a part of the world that is so developed so crowded and so modernized it's kind of nice to see the old seaboard 1920s passenger station still standing and still in service the northbound Silver Star soon arrived engineer a friend of John cachito Aaron Carter the Amtrak stations on the X seaboard South Florida rail corridor among the nicest on the silver service route long wide platforms that are well maintained shelter for waiting riders and close to road transport after 7 minutes and track 92 left Fort Lauderdale for West Palm Beach Tampa and points north John and I left for lunch we ate and got right back to the tracks heading north on i-95 into West Palm we let down at Lantana where Richard Smith rejoined us the Lantana intermediate signals looked favorable for something coming a yellow on the East Main a green on the West Main though I'm still not sure how to decipher them on this railroad this is why Richard and John and a lot of FEC rail fans like Lantana an unobstructed s-curve with a flat off-street place to wait and shoot [Applause] we moved up to the north end of Effie C's West Palm Beach yard 23rd Street crossing northbound 202 was coming and the wind was kicking up from storms building over the Everglades when you're zoomed all the way in even the slightest camera shakes are magnified and the wind gusts were doing the job another LNG power set and FEC 411 of GP 40 - - all hauling a very long fec mixed rate my thanks to Richard Smith of Boca Raton and John Patito of Delray Beach for a fantastic railfanning day on the FEC check out their YouTube channels there's a link to both of them in the description below this video at milepost to 97.9 on the Florida East Coast Railway this is Danny Harmon out

Channel: Distant Signal

Views: 133,864

Keywords: FEC, Florida East Coast Railway, Railroad, rail, railfan, trains, Brightline, All Aboard Florida, Boca Raton, railfanning, Delray Beach, Deerfield Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Amtrak, Freight train, Richard Smith, John Petito

Id: Fsg5nW909K4

Length: 13min 16sec (796 seconds)

Published: Thu May 23 2019