Sanford historic article

Sanford, Florida
O N C E
A
By R. Ken Murdock
and William R. Cogswell
Sanford’s Early Years
Sanford, Florida, was once a Coast
Line town and the headquarters for the
Jacksonville District of ACL’s Southern
Division. The district included the mainline
from Jacksonville to Sanford, and all district
dispatching was done in Sanford. Besides
being a district headquarters, Sanford had
a roundhouse, locomotive and car shops,
a major yard, and five branch lines that
converged on it from almost all directions.
Sanford, however, didn’t have its beginning
as a railroad town. It began as a steamboat
landing on Lake Monroe, through which the
St. Johns River slowly flows on its northerly,
winding course to Jacksonville and the
Atlantic Ocean. The river provided easy
access to the central part of Florida from the
port city of Jacksonville and points north.
But once leaving Sanford for the Florida
interior, travel became much more difficult
since roads were very primitive in the late
1800s.
Sanford was founded by Henry Shelton
Sanford, a former U.S. Minister to Belgium.
Sanford purchased 12,548 acres in 1870 and
envisioned a planned city, “The Gate City
of South Florida,” on the south shore of
Lake Monroe. In 1877 his town of Sanford
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was incorporated and he annexed the small
settlement of Mellonville, immediately east
of Sanford, six years later. He planted citrus
groves and introduced 140 varieties of citrus
to Florida. The town’s economy became well
established in agriculture. In 1880 Sanford
formed the Florida Land and Colonization
Company in London to attract foreign
investors to his new city. Sanford also served
on the board of directors of Henry B. Plant’s
Savannah, Florida & Western Railroad and
was a stockholder in Plant’s Adams Express
Company.
The town of Sanford had become an
established steamboat town, but that
would soon change with the coming of the
railroads. Sanford’s economic base was
originally citrus but severe back-to-back
freezes in the winter of 1894 and 1895
killed all the trees. Sanford’s farmers were
near ruin, but it was soon discovered that
the rich soil and artesian wells made the
land ideal for growing vegetable crops.
One crop that seemed to thrive was celery.
Sanford eventually became one of the largest
vegetable producing and shipping centers in
the country. With its well-planned business
and residential areas, Sanford became a
great center for trade and commerce and was
popularly known as the “Celery City.” The
growers, however, needed a faster and more
efficient way to get their crops to market.
T O W N,
P A R T
1
Above: This view shows the South
Florida Railroad’s first depot in
Sanford. The SFRR tracks terminated
on a 700-foot pier on Lake Monroe;
the large lake can be seen in the
background of this busy 1883 scene
with three narrow gauge trains in the
station. —Sanford Museum collection
The South Florida Railroad
In 1879, Henry Sanford became involved
in helping to promote a railroad line that
would connect with the steamboats at the
Sanford wharf and travel south to Orlando
and further into the Florida interior. This
proposed railroad would greatly improve
the difficult travel south of Sanford for
passengers as well as freight, which included
agricultural products, lumber, and cattle. A
three-foot gauge line was planned and would
be named the South Florida Railroad. At
its conception, having no connections with
other railroads, the SFRR was envisioned
only as an extension of the steamboat route,
but that too would soon change.
The railroad actually had its beginning
in 1875 when a group of Mellonville
merchants charted the Lake Monroe &
Orlando Railroad. The promoters couldn’t
raise the capital to begin construction and
were in jeopardy of losing their charter and
land grants if the line was not completed
4th Quarter 2010
Right: This view of South Florida RR’s
second depot, then known as Union
Station, shows the fenced garden area
between it and the PICO Hotel. The
railroad pier and Lake Monroe can
be seen in the distance. —Sanford
Museum collection
by the end of 1880. Meanwhile, the SFRR
investors had tried to get a charter to build
south along the same route and were turned
down by the State of Florida due to the
existence of the LM&O’s charter. Thus, the
SFRR investors made an offer to purchase
the LM&O’s charter and it was accepted.
Investors in the SFRR were E.W. Henck,
President; E.F. Crafts, Secretary; H. Mercer;
and Dr. C.C. Haskell, Treasurer, all local
businessmen. Other out-of-state investors
included E.B. Haskell, brother of Dr.
Haskell, and R.M. Pulsifer, owners of
the Boston Herald newspaper. These two
gentlemen provided the majority of the
financial backing for the project. Former
President Ulysses S. Grant, while visiting in
the area, was invited to turn the first shovel
of dirt at the groundbreaking on January 10,
1880. Construction began immediately after
the ceremony by clearing and grading the
right-of-way, but progress was slow at first
due to labor shortages.
Ten miles of 30-pound rail and a small
locomotive, to be named Seminole, arrived
by the end of January 1880, and rail work
began. Additional rail was purchased;
however, the rail supply ran out three miles
short of Orlando causing a three-month
construction delay. During the delay the
work forces were used to build an 800-footlong pier into Lake Monroe that could
accommodate five steamboats and three
trains at the same time. All construction
materials and locomotives came down the
St. Johns River to Sanford on steamboats.
James E. Ingraham, Henry Sanford’s
partner, became an investor and president in
December 1880, ousting E.W. Henck, who
was blamed for the three-month construction
delay. The proposed route planned from
Sanford to Charlotte Harbor on Florida’s
Gulf Coast was then revised to something
more attainable.
Rail finally arrived and on October 1,
1880, the railroad reached Orlando, the
temporary end of the line. The SFRR
chartered the Sanford & Indian River
Railroad in 1881 but delayed construction
on that line after a decision to concentrate
on extending the SFRR from Orlando to
Kissimmee. The line reached that steamboat
town at the headwaters of the Kissimmee
River on March 25, 1882. This would be
the end of construction for the SFRR until
Henry Plant came on the scene.
Henry Plant Arrives in 1883
Henry Plant was seeking to expand his
Savannah Florida & Western further into
Florida’s interior and to have a port to
connect with shipping to and from Cuba
and the West Indies. He initially failed in
his attempt to acquire the three-foot gauge
Florida Southern Railway and then turned
his attention to the South Florida Railroad.
He struck a deal and purchased a three-fifths
interest in the SFRR in March 1883.
The Jacksonville, Tampa & Key West
Railway had a charter to build a line from
Sanford to Tampa, but because it was
underfunded it could not finish the line and
was in jeopardy of losing its land grants.
Plant acquired the JT&KW charter by
Left: This circa-1895 map shows
portions of Lake, Orange, and Volusia
counties and the profusion of railroad
lines in the area at the time. Sanford is
located at the upper right, on the south
side of Lake Monroe. —Ken Murdock
collection
Sanford, Florida: Once a Coast Line Town
5
Right: South Florida’s three-footgauge mixed train with 4-4-0 No. 6,
the E.B. Haskell, poses in Tampa
around 1885. The train was typical of
most South Florida trains. —Harold
Vollrath collection via Central Florida
Chapter NRHS
quit-claim deed on May 4, 1883. He had
only seven months to build 74 miles of
track from Tampa to Kissimmee to retain
the land grants. Plant began construction at
both ends of the line and finished two days
before the deadline on January 23, 1884,
with the two segments meeting five miles
east of Lakeland. On March 10, 1893, the
SFRR was absorbed into the Plant System
and operated as the South Florida Division of
the Savannah, Florida & Western Railroad.
The Plant System operated three trains daily
and one train daily except Sunday between
Sanford and Tampa in 1893, with a travel
time of about four hours for the 115-mile trip.
Plant built several branches; one was from
Lake Alfred to Bartow, where interchange
was made with the disconnected southern
portion of the Florida Southern Railway. The
other was north from Bartow, crossing the
mainline at Lakeland and continuing north to
Pemberton Ferry (renamed Croom), where
it interchanged with the northern portion of
the Florida Southern Railway. About a year
later, Plant leased the St. Cloud & Sugar
Belt Railroad from Kissimmee to St. Cloud
and Narcoossee, and acquired the line in
1893. Plant also acquired the bankrupt
Florida Midland Railway from Kissimmee
to Longwood in 1896. All these branches
served as feeders into his South Florida
Division mainline from Sanford to Tampa.
The South Florida Railroad had built its
shops and headquarters in Sanford. Being
approximately midway between Jacksonville
and Tampa, the Sanford shops worked well
for servicing the Plant System’s steam
locomotives and were therefore retained
and expanded. Plant also built a company
hospital just west of the shops. Plant’s
Sanford hospital was later closed, probably
sometime after his much larger company
hospital in Waycross, Georgia, was opened.
The Sanford & Indian River Railroad
In 1883, with the Kissimmee extension
from Orlando completed, the SFRR’s
attention returned to the Sanford & Indian
River Railroad, which had been chartered
on February 7, 1881. By this time Plant had
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gained control and 6.4 miles of track was
then constructed from Sanford to Orono and
Lake Jesup, a rich farming belt on the north
side of Lake Jesup. The line was extended an
additional 18 miles from Orono to Oviedo in
1885, and the spur from Orono to Lake Jesup
was dismantled. The line was again extended
two additional miles to Lake Charm in 1886,
where construction ended. The Oviedo and
Lake Charm areas, on the south side of Lake
Jesup, were major producers of celery and
citrus products.
The S&IR was leased to the SFRR and
operated as its Indian River Division. On
March 10, 1893, this line was absorbed by
the South Florida Railroad and then merged
into the Plant System and operated as part of
the Plant System’s South Florida Division.
The Plant System operated one mixed train
daily between Sanford and Lake Charm in
1893 with a travel time of about 1.5 hours
for the 18-mile trip. The S&IR, as an SFRR
property, used the SFRR’s depot in Sanford.
The Orange Belt Railway
The Orange Belt Railway was chartered
April 20, 1885, by T. Arnold and H. Miller,
both of Longwood, Florida, to build a
railroad from Lake Monroe to Lake Apopka,
a distance of 35 miles. Here again the
concept was to build a land extension of
the steamboat lines from one waterway to
another. The Orange Belt ordered $9,400
worth of ties from Russian emigrant Piotr
Dementieff, Anglicized to Peter Demens,
who owned a local sawmill. However, the
group was underfunded and after quickly
running out of money, had no way to pay
Demens. Demens owned two old logging
locomotives and several miles of 16-pound
rail for his logging business. His sawmill
was running out of local timber so he
decided to go into the railroad business.
Demens got a judgment for the money owed
and foreclosed on the Orange Belt Railway
and its charter.
The details of Demens’ financial difficulties
that followed are much too involved for the
purposes of this article. He did, however,
manage to get the three-foot gauge railroad
built from the settlement of Monroe on Lake
Monroe, four miles west of Sanford, to
Oakland on the south shore of Lake Apopka,
a distance of 35 miles, by November 1886.
The railroad’s shops and offices were located
in Oakland. The original 16-pound rail had
to be immediately upgraded to 25-pound
rail. Demens then continued the line 117.68
miles, reaching, in 1888, a point on Florida’s
Gulf Coast that he named St. Petersburg after
the city of his homeland. The first revenue
train had only one paying customer, an omen
of things to come.
The Orange Belt operated two passenger
trains daily except Sunday between Sanford
and St. Petersburg in 1893. Travel time was
about 15 hours for the 152-mile trip. It was
one of the longest narrow-gauge lines in the
United States. The OBRR had a turntable at
Monroe to turn its locomotives at the end
of the line, and soon installed a Ramsey
Transfer car lift system at Monroe so trucks
could be exchanged between narrow gauge
and standard gauge cars for interchange with
the JT&KW.
The line was extended four miles in
4th Quarter 2010
Right: An Orange Belt Railroad mixed
train with three-foot-gauge 4-4-0 No.
12 is on the line between Sanford and
Trilby, circa 1890. —Sanford Museum
collection
1888–89 from Monroe to Sanford, where
it built its own depot immediately west
of the Jacksonville, Tampa & Key West
Railway’s depot. Locomotives then were
turned on the turntable at Monroe and the
trains were backed into Sanford, which
lacked accommodations for turning. One
side of the OBRR’s freight depot’s platform
was standard gauge and the other side
was narrow, so loads could be transferred
between cars of the two gauges. No evidence
has been found to suggest that narrow gauge
trucks were exchanged for standard gauge
trucks in Sanford.
Demens’ financial struggles continued,
and the line was foreclosed on by the
bondholders and reorganized as the Sanford
& St. Petersburg Railway in August 1893.
The new group tried to save the line, which
depended heavily on citrus and farm crops
for most of its business, but the back-to-back
freezes of the 1894–95 winter dealt it a death
blow. The investors had little choice but to
lease the line to the Plant System on March
31, 1895.
The Jacksonville, Tampa
& Key West Railway
The five-foot gauge Jacksonville, Tampa
& Key West Railway, which originally
planned to build a line from Jacksonville
to Tampa, entered Sanford on February 22,
1886, with the financial backing of Henry
Plant. As part of the deal to acquire the
Tampa end from the JT&KW, Plant had
agreed to provide financial backing for the
northern end of the line from Jacksonville
to Sanford. Looking at the big picture, Plant
knew that he would need this line to provide
a through route to a future Tampa port for
his Savannah, Florida & Western system.
The JT&KW built the portion of the line
from Palatka to Sanford using the charter
of the Palatka & Indian River Railway
Company, and fully absorbed that entity in
1887. This line crossed the St. Johns River
near Monroe, west of Sanford where Lake
Monroe narrows and flows into the river.
The 550-foot bridge used here, known as the
Thrasher Ferry Railroad Bridge, was the final
link to connect the railroad from Jacksonville
to Tampa. The completion of this line
severely crippled the steamboat business,
yet boat service lasted into the early 1930s
by providing lower rates than the railroad for
passengers that wanted a scenic river trip and
for freight that wasn’t time-sensitive.
The JT&KW operated three daily
passenger trains between Jacksonville and
Sanford in each direction in 1893. An express
train, which made fewer stops, completed
the 125-mile trip in about four hours. The
JT&KW had its own depot in Sanford
immediately west of the SFRR’s depot.
The JT&KW had sold its rights to
build to Tampa, and so looked for other
areas of expansion. One such expansion,
beginning in 1885, was building a 28.5-mile
branchline out of Sanford westward through
Paola, Sorrento, and Mt. Dora to Tavares.
Constructed as the Sanford & Lake Eustis
Railroad Company, the line reached Tavares
in 1887. Anticipating the upcoming gauge
standardization, the line was built to fourfoot, nine-inch gauge. It was leased back to
the JT&KW and operated as that railroad’s
Sanford & Lake Eustis Division. The line
operated one train daily except Sunday each
way between Sanford and Tavares in 1893,
with the 39-mile trip taking about three and
a half hours.
The JT&KW was undercapitalized and
went into bankruptcy in 1893. It was
operated by a receiver from 1893 to 1899,
when it was sold to Henry Plant’s Plant
Investment Company. Once Plant gained
control, he converted the JT&KW depot to
freight only and moved all Sanford passenger
operations to his South Florida depot.
While building its mainline from
Left: The Jacksonville, Tampa & Key
West Railway’s Fast Mail prepares to
leave Sanford with 4-4-0 No. 7 around
1890. —Ben Wheeler collection via
Central Florida Chapter NRHS
Sanford, Florida: Once a Coast Line Town
7
Right: The S&StP crew stops to
pose with their narrow-gauge train
somewhere between Sanford and
Trilby about 1895. —Central Florida
Chapter NRHS collection
Jacksonville to Sanford, the JT&KW
built a five-foot gauge, four-mile spur
eastward on the north side of Lake Monroe
from Enterprise Junction to Enterprise. At
Enterprise a connection was made with the
five-foot Atlantic Coast, St. Johns & Indian
River Railway. Originally chartered as the
St. Johns & Indian River Railroad in 1876,
the ACStJ&IR had built the 31.75-mile
line from Titusville, on the east coast, to
Enterprise in 1883. The JT&KW leased
the entire line and began running trains
from Sanford to Titusville, where they
would make connections with the Florida
East Coast Railway. The JT&KW operated
one passenger train each way daily except
Sunday between Sanford and Titusville in
1893, taking three hours for the 48-mile
trip. This arrangement continued until 1899,
when Plant acquired the JT&KW.
The Florida Midland Railway
Another branchline important in Sanford’s
history did not originate from Sanford when
constructed, but was serviced from Sanford
in the later years of its operations. This
line began as the Florida Midland Railway,
built from Longwood through Apopka and
Ocoee before reaching Kissimmee in 1890.
It crossed the three-foot gauge S&StP at
grade at Clarcona. Interestingly, when Plant
acquired the line in 1896, he converted it
from standard gauge to three-foot gauge
and operated it as a branch off his three-foot
gauge S&StP by installing a connecting
track at the junction. It was converted back
to standard gauge when the ACL converted
the eastern portion of the S&StP to standard
gauge in 1908. When the ACL acquired
the Florida Midland from the Plant System
in 1902, it abandoned the segment from
Longwood to Apopka in 1904, but continued
serving the remainder of the line from
Apopka through Clarcona to Kissimmee.
The Florida Railroad Commission ordered
the ACL to install a transfer hoist in
Kissimmee of sufficient capacity to transfer
all loaded cars necessary for the transaction
of business to and from the Florida Midland
Branch. This device, a Ramsey Transfer that
was already in use at Monroe, had to be in
operation by May 1, 1906.
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Gauge Standardization
Sanford was becoming a major railroad
hub in Central Florida, with a north-south
mainline passing through and numerous
branchlines extending out in several
directions. Interchange was hampered due
to the three- and five-foot gauges entering
and leaving Sanford. In February 1886, the
southern railroad owners and managers
met in Atlanta and decided to accept the
northern standard gauge for the south and
to make the conversion on May 31 and June
1, 1886. An exception was that they would
convert to four-foot, nine-inch rather than
four-foot, eight and a half-inch, each gauge
being completely compatible for interchange
with the other. All lines serving Sanford
converted on these two days except the cashstrapped Sanford & St. Petersburg. Once
Plant took control of it in 1895, he began regauging the profitable western end from St.
Petersburg to Trilby, where it interchanged
with the Florida Southern Railway, which he
also controlled by then. The less profitable
eastern segment from Trilby to Sanford
remained three-foot gauge into the ACL era
and was not standard-gauged until 1908.
The FEC Enters Sanford
When Plant acquired the JT&KW in 1899,
he terminated that company’s lease on the
line from Enterprise to Titusville with the
ACStJ&IR the same year. The ACStJ&IR
in turn sold the line to the Southeastern
Railway Company, and the Florida East
Coast took over its operations. Plant then
leased his four-mile spur from Enterprise
to Enterprise Junction to the FEC and gave
that railroad trackage rights on seven miles
of his mainline from Enterprise to Sanford,
thus allowing FEC trains to enter Sanford.
The FEC purchased the SRC from Enterprise
to Titusville in 1902. The FEC used Plant’s
SFRR depot, and it became known as Union
Station.
Plant’s Sanford Legacy
Plant began building and acquiring hotels
in various towns served by his railroads and
soon owned a total of nine. One of his first to
be built was the Plant Investment Company
(PICO) Hotel with a railroad restaurant in
Sanford in 1887. It was adjacent to his new
brick South Florida depot. The ornate brick
hotel was designed in a Turkish style similar
to his much larger Tampa Bay Hotel built in
1891, and may have influenced its design.
Interestingly, the PICO Hotel has never been
mentioned in any publications covering
Plant’s railroads and hotels.
Immediately south of the PICO Hotel,
Plant built the ornate brick PICO Block, a
two story office building on the corner of 1st
Street and North Oak Avenue (then called
Railroad Way) in the same year that he built
the hotel. The PICO Block’s early tenants
included the SFRR’s offices, the Western
Union Telegraph office, and the Southern
Express Company’s offices plus a number
of other offices and merchants.
Both buildings remain today and are
included on a walking tour of the Sanford
4th Quarter 2010
Right: Henry Plant built the ornate
brick Plant Investment Company
(PICO) Hotel and railroad restaurant
on Railroad Way (North Oak Avenue)
in 1887 adjacent to his brick depot.
The facility is well preserved today and
has been used as an office building.
—Sanford Museum collection
Historic District. The PICO Block has been
heavily modified and much of the ornate
brickwork has been removed or covered
with stucco. The PICO Hotel has been fairly
well preserved on the exterior, with only the
awning and the onion-domed tower roof
having been removed, and its standing seam
metal roof replaced with asphalt shingles.
After the ACL built a new depot on 9th Street,
the Coast Line used its North Oak Avenue
depot, built by Plant, as a freight station and
later rented it to tenants for non-railroad
uses. Regrettably, this ornate brick structure
was demolished in 1960 to make way for an
adjacent bank to expand.
The ACL Comes to Town
By 1899 Henry Plant owned or controlled
all rail lines serving Sanford. Plant passed
away unexpectedly on June 23, 1899, while
trying unsuccessfully to assure that his
railroad empire would not be absorbed into
another system after his death. His second
wife, having no interest in the railroad,
contested his will and was successful. She
sold the railroad and Plant’s steamship lines,
not including Plant’s hotels, to the Atlantic
Coast Line in 1902 for $46.5 million. The
Sanford & St. Petersburg, being a leased
entity, did not go into the ACL fold until 1903.
Sanford’s population had reached more
than 5,000 by the time the ACL arrived.
Early improvements in the Sanford area
began soon after ACL took over the Plant
System and included replacing the original
truss swing span bridge over the St. Johns
River near the community of Monroe (whose
name changed to Lake Monroe in 1918).
Many miles of mainline trackage throughout
Florida, including those through Sanford,
were improved by raising the grades for
better drainage, reducing curvature, and
upgrading rail to 85 pounds. Secondary
and branchlines were upgraded to 60- and
70-pound rail.
Once the Sanford & Lake Eustis and
the Sanford & St. Petersburg were under
the ACL’s control, their separate routes
from Sanford to Sylvan Lake (called Paola
on older maps and timetables, since both
settlements were close to the junction) were
combined using the S&LE to the point where
they had crossed at grade. The diamond
was removed and a turnout was installed,
and Sylvan Lake then became the junction
where the two lines diverged. The old S&StP
narrow gauge line was then removed from
Sylvan Lake through Monroe to Sanford, a
distance of 8.5 miles. Several publications
have stated that this happened in 1903;
however, it is unlikely that the change
happened prior to the S&StP’s conversion
to standard gauge in 1908.
Sanford became the headquarters for the
Jacksonville District of ACL’s Southern
Division (originally the Third Division). The
district originally covered the mainline from
Jacksonville to Sanford and branchlines from
Sanford to Leesburg; Fort Mason to Astor;
Tavares to Lane Park; Sanford to Trilby;
Apopka to Kissimmee; Sanford to Lake
Charm; and DeLand Junction to Deland. The
branch from Palatka to Rochelle was added
later due to consolidations of other districts.
All dispatching for the district was done
from Sanford. The mainline south of Sanford
Left: The Plant System’s Hospital No.
1 was located in Sanford just west of
the company’s shops and roundhouse.
Later a much larger hospital was built
in Waycross, which became an ACL
hospital after the ACL acquired the
Plant System in 1902.
—Sanford Museum collection
Sanford, Florida: Once a Coast Line Town
9
to Lakeland was in the Ridge District until
it was consolidated into the Tampa District.
Sanford was a crew change point for
north- and southbound mainline trains, and
crews were also called for trains servicing
the four branchlines and the yard and local
jobs, both north and south, on the mainline.
The number of branchlines served from
Sanford would eventually grow to five.
Many railroaders now called Sanford
home, and the ACL and its employees
had become a very important part of the
economic and social life of the community.
Railroaders became involved in all aspects
of the community including civic clubs, the
Masonic Lodge, and churches. Sanford had
become a Coast Line town.
Above: This portion of an 1890 bird’s-eye map view of Sanford, looking
south, shows the South Florida RR’s pier and further south, Plant’s SFRR
depot; his PICO Hotel immediately behind the SFRR depot; and his twostory PICO Block office building immediately south of the depot. The
Jacksonville, Tampa & Key West depot is across the tracks and west (to
the right) of the SFRR’s depot. The Orange Belt’s depot is across the tracks
and west of the JT&KW depot. By 1895 the OB’s depot had been relocated
to the south side of that line’s tracks. —Sanford Museum collection
Below: Another section of the 1890 bird’s-eye sketch shows the SFRR
shops and roundhouse. The major structures were in the same locations
in later ACL photos but most had been enlarged. The train passing behind
the roundhouse is a JT&KW run en route to Jacksonville. The train behind
the shops is a SFRR train running the wye before backing into the depot on
Railway Way. The building to the right of the train on the wye (numbered 53
on its roof) is the Plant System Hospital No. 1. —Sanford Museum collection
FEC Continues to Serve Sanford
The Florida East Coast’s trackage rights
from Enterprise Junction to Sanford, granted
by Henry B. Plant, continued for almost a
decade after the ACL acquired the Plant
System. The Florida Railroad Commission’s
report for the year ending March 3, 1906,
Orders 84 and 85, required scheduling
changes between ACL’s Train No. 80 and
FEC’s Train No. 12 for improved passenger
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4th Quarter 2010
connections in Sanford. The orders also
required improved connections with ACL’s
No. 80 and FEC’s No. 2 at Orange City
Junction for the FEC’s line from New
Smyrna.
All Florida railroads were required to
report their mileage annually to the Florida
Railroad Commission. The FEC reported
its mileage from Titusville via Enterprise
Junction to Sanford each year through the
year ending February 28, 1911 (which was
primarily for 1910), but reported mileage
only to Enterprise Junction for the year
ending February 29, 1912 (primarily for
1911), and all succeeding years. While no
request for discontinuance was found, it
seems reasonable to assume that the service
was discontinued sometime in 1911 based
on the mileage reporting requirement. The
FEC continued leasing the ACL’s four-mile
segment from Enterprise to Enterprise
Junction. This permitted FEC to make
passenger connections and interchange
freight at Enterprise Junction (changed to
Benson Junction about 1925) with the ACL
and to continue serving its customers on that
segment of the line. The ACL and the FEC
continued to make passenger connections
at Benson Junction into the 1940s. The line
was eventually downgraded to freight-only
and was completely abandoned by the FEC
in 1974–75, with only a short spur remaining
on the Titusville end.
The Sanford & Everglades Railroad
The ACL got off to a bad start with a group
of local growers in the Lake Jesup area over
freight service. The growers wanted the
ACL to build a farm spur into their fields for
loading to ease the problems of moving their
crops to town over muddy, primitive roads.
Quoting from Felix Reifschneider’s “Celery
Belt Line” article in Railroad Magazine,
October 1950, the ACL bluntly refused by
saying, “Mule teams will haul out all celery
that needs to be hauled for years to come.”
The growers’ response was, “Then we’ll
build our own line.”
Five of the biggest growers pooled their
resources and chartered the Sanford &
Everglades Railroad in 1908, with S.O.
Chase as president. The S&E charter called
for a 250-mile road to Lake Okeechobee.
This ploy was designed to bluff the ACL
into thinking that it was in for some real
competition. It soon became obvious that the
growers meant business when construction
began at a rapid rate in 1908. The line began
in Sanford, branching off the ACL’s Lake
Charm Branch just below 16th Street, a point
that became known as S&E Junction. The
S&E constructed the line east to Canaan,
then south to Cameron City, an AfricanAmerican settlement near Lake Jesup.
The line then turned west and continued to
Mecca Junction where it again tied into the
ACL’s Lake Charm Branch. In December
1910, when construction ended, a golden
spike ceremony was held celebrating the
11.5 miles of standard gauge railroad that
had been completed.
The S&E owned one 4-4-0 steam
locomotive, probably purchased secondhand. The branch served a vast agricultural
area between Sanford, Lake Monroe, and
Lake Jesup, which produced many carloads
of perishables for the ACL. The Seaboard
Air Line, wanting to tap into the area from
its line from Orlando to Oviedo, tried to buy
the line. As soon as the ACL heard about
the SAL’s threat, ACL promptly bought
the line from the growers and took over its
operations in 1913. The ACL operated the
line as its S&E Branch. A new connecting
track was soon built, running between
the 9th Street Station and the old shops, to
provide a direct connection to and from
ACL’s Rands Yard (just north of Sanford)
with the old Sanford & Indian River line to
Oviedo and the S&E Branch. A 1948 aerial
photograph of the S&E Branch reveals four
large structures with rail sidings that appear
to be vegetable packinghouses and another
that appears to be a fertilizer warehouse. One
has been positively identified as the Sanford
Farmer’s Exchange packinghouse with a
pre-cooler. It is a fairly safe assumption that
the other three were similar facilities with
pre-coolers where pre-iced reefers were
spotted for loading. It was reported that the
branch became one of the most profitable
Above: A Sanford & Everglades
4-4-0, with its train of ACL Atlantic
Coast Despatch ventilated boxcars,
waits on a siding on the S&E Branch
as Sanford Traction’s trolley passes
about 1910. Sanford Traction had
trackage rights on the ACL’s Lake
Charm Branch from Mecca Junction
north to the S&E Junction, where it
would return to S&E rails. —Sanford
Museum collection
in the ACL system based on the amount of
freight generated per mile of track.
The S&E’s builders, as an afterthought,
added trolley service to their railroad.
Known as the Sanford Traction Company,
the service would last for only two years
during 1909 and 1910. Service was provided
by two Fairbanks-Morse, single-truck,
45-horsepower, gas-mechanical cars
numbered 1 and 2. The cars ran on the
Sanford & Everglades tracks and on the
ACL’s Lake Charm Branch via 1.2 miles
of trackage rights between Mecca Junction
and S&E Junction. From a point at 16th
Street near the S&E Junction the trolley
rails turned north on Sanford Avenue and
ran to 1st Street, where they turned west.
They then ran through the center of town
to Oak Avenue in the vicinity of the ACL
passenger depot, a total of 2.1 miles from
16th Street. Plans had included extending
the line four miles west to Monroe, but they
never materialized.
The trolley line was known as the “Celery
Belt Line,” and carried school children from
the rural farming communities to school in
town and hauled farm workers from town
to the fields. The line initially made eight
daily round trips. Its success was doomed the
year after it was built when Celery Avenue
was bricked. The school contract was then
Sanford, Florida: Once a Coast Line Town
11
Above: After the ACL absorbed
the Plant System in 1902, its depot
remained on Railroad Way (North
Oak Avenue), on the shores of Lake
Monroe, until 1912. This busy scene
about 1910 captures four trains backed
into the station on Railroad Way. First
Street crosses the tracks in front of
the trains, and Plant’s two-story PICO
Block office building is to the right
of the trains. —William F. Toevs Jr.
collection via Sanford Museum
awarded to a bus company, and the traction
company soon abandoned passenger service.
Most of the trolley rails along Sanford
Avenue were removed by 1913 but the rails
in the brick pavement of 1st Street remained
for many years.
ACL Builds New Depots
All mainline and branchline passenger
trains had to back into Sanford’s first depot,
built by the SFRR, and also the second
depot built by the Plant System, both on
North Oak Avenue (Railroad Way). The
backup move tied up street grade crossings
and added time to the highly competitive
schedules. ACL began construction on a new
9th Street Station in 1912 and dedicated it
in early 1913. The new red brick two-story
passenger structure was located on the
mainline just west of the 7th Street shops
and roundhouse. This station was referred to
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on some old post cards and maps as Union
Station, though it served only one railroad.
The term was probably used because of the
many ACL branchlines that fed into Sanford
where passengers made connections with the
mainline trains. The Jacksonville District
headquarters and dispatching offices were
located in this new facility.
In the late 1920s the ACL demolished the
old JT&KW wood-framed freight depot and
built a new freight depot with a two-story
freight office in the same location, just south
of 1st Street on Myrtle Avenue. This facility
was built of fireproof perimeter walls. The
freight portion, less the offices, remains today
although it is no longer owned by the railroad.
The 7th Street Shops
Henry B. Plant expanded the South Florida
7th Street Shops as traffic increased and more
Above: ACL built a new depot
on 9th Street in 1913 to eliminate
backup moves into the old downtown
Railroad Way depot. This circa-1925
postcard shows the street-side view
of the depot. The headquarters of the
Jacksonville District of the Southern
Division was located on the second
floor, including the district dispatcher.
The Railway Express annex building is
in the distance. —William F. Toevs Jr.
collection via Sanford Museum
equipment required servicing and repair. By
1890 the shop facilities included an eight-stall
roundhouse, an enlarged locomotive erection
shop (back shop), a machine shop, blacksmith
shop, a car shop that included woodworking
and painting, a tin shop, a shop office, and
several storage buildings. By 1895 a separate
4th Quarter 2010
large car repair shop was added. The erection
shop had been enlarged three times by 1901.
The turntable was rotated manually, a feature
that was never upgraded.
When ACL assumed ownership of the
shops, the railroad continued to expand them
by adding another stall to the roundhouse
and making the fourth and fifth expansions
to the erection shop. By 1912 a pipefitters
shop had been added. ACL built a coaling
trestle and a wood water tank for filling
locomotive tenders, plus a sanding facility.
ACL’s Sanford shops were small compared
to others in the system, but were capable of
handling every class of repairs required for
steam locomotives from running repairs to
a complete rebuild.
According to his obituary in the MarchApril 1938 issue of Atlantic Coast Line News,
F.W. Shupert was the shop boiler foreman
in the 1920s and 1930s. He was known as
an authority on locomotive construction
and inspection and held several locomotive
patents; the best-known was his Shupert
firebox design. The March-April 1939 issue
of Atlantic Coast Line News reported:
“Mr. M. Carroll, General Foreman,
Sanford, Fla., has set a mark for his fellow
shop officers to shoot at, and one that is hard
to beat. Sanford Shop has not suffered an
employee chargeable injury since December
1, 1927, with a force numbering 125. During
that period they have worked one and onehalf million man hours. Mr. Carroll and his
predecessor, the late Mr. H.R. Stevens, have
maintained a very high order of safety at this
important shop.”
That record was quite impressive when you
consider the size and weight of equipment
that was maintained. In 1928 the Sanford
Herald reported that one-third of the payroll
of Seminole County came from the railroad.
Rands Yard and Produce
The small freight yard in downtown
Sanford wasn’t large enough to handle
the rapidly growing agricultural business,
so ACL built a large yard west of town
along its mainline between Sanford and the
community of Lake Monroe in the early
1900s. The yard was named Rand’s Yard
for Frederic Rand, who was the General
Manager of Henry Sanford’s Florida Land
and Colonization Company. Employee
timetables dropped the apostrophe, thus
labeling it Rands Yard.
Sanford Public Service Company built
Above: ACL shop employees pose
at the locomotive erecting shop at the
West 7th Street Shops in Sanford in
this 1910 scene. ACL would enlarge
this shop several more times before it
rebuilt its last steam locomotive there
in August 1947. —Sanford Museum
collection
a large ice plant at the south end of Rands
Yard in 1917, just north of where the
tracks crossed 1 st Street, to ice reefers
laden with celery and other locally grown
farm products. In 1926 the Mountain Ice
Company built another large ice plant near
the middle of Rands Yard. This icing facility
had a 700-ton storage capacity, operated
24 hours per day, and was said to be the
second largest in the nation when built. In
1928 the Sanford Herald reported that 6,576
carloads of celery and 949 carloads of other
vegetables were shipped out of Seminole
County.
“Many reefers were stored in the yard
during the off season. At its peak, Rands
Yard began just north of State Road 46 (1st
Street) and continued railroad north to the
southern edge of the community of Lake
Monroe, about two miles in length. Needing
a place to service and repair the large fleet of
reefers, ACL built a large car shop south of
Rands Yard in the mid-1920s. A connecting
Left: Celery is being loaded at
Sanford into Fruit Growers Express
wood reefers on February 16, 1926,
for shipment over the ACL. It would
be 1935 before the pre-cooling
process for vegetables became the
industry standard. —Sanford Museum
collection
Sanford, Florida: Once a Coast Line Town
13
Above: This aerial view of the ACL
7th Street Shops and roundhouse is
looking southeast circa 1920. The
street crossing the photo above the
roundhouse is French Avenue, which
is U.S. 17-92 today. The upper half
of the wood water tank can be seen
above the smoke near French Avenue.
—Sanford Museum collection
Left: A second aerial view of the
shops, now looking southwest, also
dates from circa 1920. The roof in
the foreground was the locomotive
erecting shop, and the next building
with the clerestory windows was the
pipefitters and machine shop. The
9th Street Station can be seen in the
center background. The car shop
building was to the left of the lines of
boxcars, out of the photograph.
—Sanford Museum collection
Left: This view shows the ACL
machine shop and blacksmith shop
at the 7th Street Shops on November
2, 1945. The large cylindrical tank in
the background belonged to the local
gas company and was where the two
aerial photographs were taken.
—Hattie Boyd photo, Sanford Museum
collection
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4th Quarter 2010
Above: This map, adapted from a 1922
Sanborn fire insurance map, shows the
layout of ACL’s steam locomotive shops
at that time. There were no major later
additions, so this is a good representation
of the shop layout until it was closed in the
early 1950s. The locomotive erecting shop
actually had four tracks entering from the
turntable but all were not shown on this
map. The woodwork and paint shop was
originally the car shop in 1884, where the
South Florida RR built its freight cars.
—Adapted by Ken Murdock
Right: Six ACL Copperhead Ten-wheelers
— named for their copper-capped stacks
— and a switcher pose in this roundhouse
scene at the 7th Street Shops just prior to
the beginning of World War I, about 1914.
—Central Florida Chapter NRHS collection
Right: This November 2, 1945, scene of
the Sanford roundhouse shows that very
few running repairs were being done on
steam locomotives by that time. The last
steam locomotive repaired in the Sanford
Shops was in August 1947. The nose of
one locomotive can be seen outside, to the
rear of third stall from the right. —Hattie
Boyd photo, Sanford Museum collection
Sanford, Florida: Once a Coast Line Town
15
Above: This map shows all branchlines
served from Sanford with local crews,
and the original heritage of each.
All had scheduled passenger trains
leaving Sanford and returning daily,
or daily except Sunday, except the
Sanford & Everglades Branch. The
FEC line is shown on the north side of
Lake Monroe and allowed FEC trains
to travel from Titusville to Sanford with
ACL trackage rights from Enterprise
Junction. —Drawn by Ken Murdock
track was also built from the former S&LE
branch to Rands Yard so trains to or from that
branch or the former S&StP branch could
have direct access.
Harvested celery moved from the fields
by mule-powered wagons, and later trucks,
to packinghouses located along rail sidings.
Once in a packinghouse, it then moved by
conveyor and was washed, graded, and
crated. The crated celery then continued
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by conveyor to the pre-cooler, where it
was given an icy shower for 45 minutes to
reduce its temperature to about 34 degrees.
Washing and pre-cooling didn’t begin on a
large scale until about 1935. This process
greatly improved the freshness of the
product when it reached the consumer. It
then continued by conveyor to the waiting
railroad reefers, which had been pre-iced and
pre-cooled. Shippers often added crushed ice
on top of the load prior to closing the reefer
doors. Depending on the distance and time
of travel, re-icing may have been required
en route. Packinghouses with pre-coolers
were located in Sanford, Oviedo, on the
S&E Branch, and near Rands Yard. The
development of the pre-cooling system is
credited to F.F. Dutton, a crate manufacturer
in Sanford.
The March-April 1938 Atlantic Coast
Line News ran a front-page story on Sanford
entitled “Sanford, Florida, ‘The World’s
Celery Center.’” It reported that Seminole
County, the fourth smallest in the state, led
the entire state for total carlot shipments
of both fruits and vegetables during the
1936–37 season and produced one-fourth
of the celery grown in the United States. It
further stated that Seminole County shipped
an average of a solid carload of fruits and
vegetables every hour of the day and night
to northern markets. It also reported that the
Mountain Ice Company’s plant mentioned
earlier was by this time the largest in the
world, and a Sanford printing plant that
printed fruit and vegetable labels was the
second largest in the United States. The
Mountain Ice Company’s name became
the City Ice and Fuel Company sometime
in the late 1930s or early 1940s as the new
company expanded its operations in Florida.
Peter Schaal’s book, Sanford and the World
War II Years, states that in September 1944
“City Fuel and Ice Company was pre-icing
400 cars daily, using 80 men, two and a half
times as many as before the war.”
4th Quarter 2010
Right: Workers are loading ice at the
Sanford Public Service Company’s ice
plant into the ice bunkers of reefers
at Rands Yard, circa 1925. This plant
was built in 1917 just north of where
State Road 46 (1st Street) crosses the
railroad. —Sanford Museum collection
Other Shippers
Even though citrus growers were
devastated by the 1894–95 freezes, several
did replant and citrus production continued,
though on a reduced scale. S.O. Chase,
one of the founders of the S&E Railroad,
was one of those growers. His Chase &
Company had two citrus packinghouses, one
in Sanford and the other on the south end
of Rands Yard. In 1928 the Sanford Herald
also reported that 900 carloads of oranges
were shipped. The newspaper also reported
that the thriving fern industry in Seminole
County shipped 90,000 crates of choice ferns
to florist shops throughout North America.
Chase & Company also manufactured
fertilizer along with a competitor, VirginiaCarolina Chemical Company. There was a
cold storage warehouse in Sanford, several
lumber companies, and several crate
manufacturers that received lumber that
was used to make produce-shipping crates.
Crown Paper Company’s large printing plant
printed the colorful labels for the produce
crates. All these facilities had rail sidings
Below: This 1946 aerial shows City Ice
& Fuel Company’s ice plant at Rands
Yard and the lines of reefers in the
yard. By this time the ACL called it the
largest ice plant in the world. The low
structure to the right of the ice plant
appears to be a packinghouse, and it
would have had a pre-cooler by this
date. —ACL News photo, July 1946
to support their operations. There were also
several fertilizer warehouses at various
locations, each with rail service. Chase
& Company remains in business today in
Seminole County with a lawn and garden
product line known as Sunniland.
End of an Era
As locally grown agricultural shipping
began to taper off in the late 1940s through
1950s, the southern end of Rands Yard was
reduced to several yard lead tracks, each
about a mile in length, and the main part of
the remaining yard was about a mile long.
Naval Air Station Sanford was built and
commissioned in 1942 within the boundaries
of the S&E and Lake Charm Branches.
This large facility further reduced valuable
agricultural land. Mechanical harvesters
were coming into use in the 1950s, making
it possible to harvest and ship much larger
celery crops in each growing season. This
meant more acreage could be harvested in a
season while usable land was shrinking due
to development.
This series of events led farmers to begin
moving their operations to larger-acreage
muck farms in south Florida. This trend
soon led to the end of large-scale celery
production in Seminole County and the
end of the need for the related rail facilities
that once supported it. The Sanford Public
Service Company’s ice plant was purchased
by Florida Power & Light Company in the
late 1920s, apparently due to its electric
generating capabilities. It is unknown
how long it continued producing ice after
the change of ownership, but the building
remained until the late 1950s or early 1960s.
The City Ice and Fuel Company’s plant
closed in the late 1960s or early 1970s, but
its structural ruins stood until the end of 2009
when it was demolished.
• • •
In Part 2, the authors survey the many
dramatic changes that shaped Sanford
beginning in the 1950s — physical plant
modernization, loss of the branches, the
coming of Auto-Train, and more — and
share their personal railfanning memories.
Sanford, Florida: Once a Coast Line Town
17
Sanford, Florida
O N C E
A
By R. Ken Murdock
and William R. Cogswell
Mainline Improvements in 1949-50
Immediately after the Second World War
was over the Atlantic Coast Line began a
major postwar modernization program. One
target was the railroad’s 238-mile mainline
between Jacksonville and Tampa via Orlando
that in some places was as crooked as a
snake. Predecessors Jacksonville, Tampa
& Key West (Jacksonville–Sanford) and
South Florida Railroad (Sanford–Tampa)
were both undercapitalized during their
construction in the 1880s, laying their tracks
on the path of least resistance. This resulted
in a large number of three-degree and a
few five- and six-degree curves that ACL’s
postwar management wanted eliminated to
speed up their trains in the face of growing
competition from other railroads and the
trucking industry.
The Coast Line’s chief competitor, the
Seaboard Air Line Railroad, was more
fortunate in the state of Florida. Most SAL
mainlines had far fewer curves because
they were built as late as the mid-1920s
using modern earth-moving machinery.
Seaboard’s Jacksonville–Tampa mainline
C O A S T
L I N E
via Wildwood was also 27 miles shorter than
the Coast Line’s via Orlando.
The following is a summary of the most
important realignment projects completed
by ACL in north-central Florida in 1949–50.
The worst problems were between Sanford
and Winter Park, the former SFRR narrowgauge alignment, with five- and six-degree
curves. Between mileposts 770 and 772, just
south of Sanford, a new main track alignment
was placed in service, a project that involved
the reduction of a one-degree curve, a twodegree curve, and four three-degree curves
into a single one-degree curve. At milepost
774, Soldiers Creek, near Lake Mary, a new
main track alignment was placed in service
that eliminated two three-degree curves
and a five-degree curve in favor of a single
two-degree curve. At milepost 782, near
Maitland, a new alignment with a threedegree curve was substituted for the former
alignment with a six-degree curve.
Between Jacksonville and Sanford at
milepost 673, Green Cove Springs, a former
compound curve 1,643 feet long with a twodegree curve to the right that reversed to the
left three degrees was reduced to a simple
three-degree curve to the left, 811 feet in
length. This new main track alignment was
T O W N,
P A R T
2
placed in service early in May 1950. At
milepost 719, Crescent City, a new alignment
was placed in service in November 1950
that reduced three three-degree curves to a
one-degree curve at the north end and a onedegree curve at the south end of the project.
At milepost 756, Orange City Junction, two
three-degree curves in the main track were
reduced to one-degree curves.
Heavy steam locomotives such as the
R-1 4-8-4s and the Q-1 2-10-2s had been
banned on the Jacksonville District mainline
because of their weight. Two old truss swing
bridges, one at Buffalo Bluff near Palatka
and the other at Lake Monroe over the St.
Johns near Sanford, didn’t have the capacity
required for a modern mainline. These two
bridges, as well as the one over the Ortega
River (also known as McGirts Creek), were
replaced in the 1960s with heavy rolling lift
bascule bridges of modern design that could
accept heavier locomotives and rolling stock
at higher speeds.
Sanford’s New Bypass, Station, and
Diesel Shop
Atlantic Coast Line’s 9th Street Station
in downtown Sanford had worked well for
many years but as the railroad’s passenger
trains became longer, more city streets
were blocked when they made station stops
for passengers. A new passenger station
was needed further out of town. Freight
traffic had grown as well and freight trains
were longer, blocking more downtown
streets as they moved slowly through on
two substandard curves. The ACL had
almost fully dieselized by this time and
the old roundhouse with its manually
powered (“armstrong”) turntable was very
inefficient for servicing diesels. The last
Left: This aerial photo clearly shows
the realignment of the old mainline
near Crescent City, Florida (MP 719),
originally built by the Jacksonville,
Tampa & Key West Railway. This
realignment reduced the total
curvature by 74 degrees, 24 minutes
and shortened the mainline by 178
feet. —Atlantic Coast Line News
photo, June 1952
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1st Quarter 2011
Right: The Seminole County High
School Band was present and began
playing when Train 92, the West Coast
Champion, arrived with Coast Line
officials and local civic leaders on
board for the grand opening ceremony
of Sanford’s new passenger depot on
October 20, 1953. Many had boarded
the train in Winter Park to make the
special arrival trip to Sanford. —ACL
News, November 1953
steam locomotive had been repaired in the
7th Street Shops in August 1947.
Consequently more modern and efficient
shops were needed for the new generation
of diesels. The solution was to construct a
bypass near the Rands Yard car shops, about
a mile west of the old shops, and build a new
combined passenger and freight station plus
a diesel shop there. With the decline in the
shipment of farm products the Rands Yard
car shop was becoming underutilized by
this time and the move consolidated all shop
functions to the new location.
A new two-mile long, partially doubletracked bypass was opened in February
1951. It shortened the mainline by 2.8
miles, leaving a distance of 6,029 feet
between mileposts 767 and 771; however the
mileposts south of 767 were not renumbered.
The double track continued north to the
community of Lake Monroe at the north end
of Rands Yard, thus providing a total of about
three miles of double-tracked mainline.
A new $800,000 air-conditioned passenger
station, Sanford’s sixth, opened in September
1953. It provided mainline water and fueling
racks at each end of the passenger platform
between the double-tracked mainlines for
servicing of both north- and southbound
passenger trains. Located on the east side
of the new bypass, the station was a modern
two-story, flat-roofed, brick facility with
passenger waiting rooms and the freight
house on the first floor. District offices,
dispatching, and training rooms were located
on the second floor. This was reportedly one
of the first ACL stations to be built new with
air conditioning.
The grand opening ceremony for the
new combined station, located just west of
Persimmon Avenue at the end of 8th Street,
was on October 20, 1953. It was a major event
with flags lining 8th Street from Persimmon
Avenue to the station. The Seminole County
High School Band was present and began
playing when train No. 92, the northbound
West Coast Champion, arrived with official
representatives of the Coast Line and local
civic leaders on board. Many had boarded
the train in Winter Park to make the special
arrival trip to Sanford. The high school’s
majorettes escorted the officials from the
train to the podium. Local citizens, Coast
Line officials, and the president of the Florida
State Chamber of Commerce spoke.
A display train, consisting of E8 532
and three passenger cars, was on the house
track for tours. Portable stairs were placed
on each side of the locomotive’s cab so
that the tour could include a walk through
Above: A display train, consisting
of E8 532 and three of ACL’s latest
lightweight passenger cars, was on
the house track for tours during the
new Sanford station’s grand opening
ceremony. Portable stairs were placed
on each side of the locomotive’s cab
so visitors could walk through the cab.
—ACL News, November 1953
the locomotive’s cab. At the end of the
ceremony, tours were conducted through
the new station. An estimated 1,500 people
attended the event.
Sanford, Florida: Once a Coast Line Town
5
Above: This photo is taken from
the passenger boarding platform
of the new ACL depot looking west
towards the new shops in 1955. The
1920s-vintage car shop is the large
covered structure on the right. The
new diesel servicing bay is still under
construction; the steel framework
is barely visible over the top of the
locomotives. —Ken Murdock photo
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Below: This is the inside the new
diesel locomotive servicing bay in
1956. The worker on the left was
installing the metal wall panels; the
facility was apparently pressed into
service while still under construction.
The pit below the locomotive was the
full width of the bay. SW9 704 was the
Orlando switcher, which was in Sanford
for servicing. —Ken Murdock photo
The New Shops
The consolidated shops were now directly
across the tracks from the new station on
the west side of the new mainline bypass.
Because ACL was almost completely
dieselized by then, the consolidated shops
did not include any steam locomotive
servicing facilities. A single-bay diesel
locomotive servicing building was built with
a full-width inspection pit. The steel-framed
structure had a metal roof with metal siding
on two sides with windows and was of the
run-through design without doors on the
track ends. Existing facilities in the shop
complex, built in the mid-1920s, included
several buildings for offices, supplies, tools,
parts and equipment, woodworking, and
other needs such as the shop air compressor.
The car repair shed was a large wood
structure with open sides about 350 feet long
and 100 feet wide. It appeared to have six
service tracks when originally built but was
later reduced to four. This modification was
apparently done to provide additional space
between each track for shop personnel and
equipment. The structure was referred to as
the RIP track, for “repair in place.”
Other newly constructed shop facilities
for diesels included a sand facility and a
1st Quarter 2011
506,000-gallon, above-ground diesel fuel
storage tank. Several storage tracks were
added for locomotives laying over or needing
servicing. Included in the shop equipment
was steam wrecker 65099. This wrecker,
with a 75-ton capacity, was later replaced by
65417, a 120-ton Industrial Works product
that was purchased from the Richmond,
Fredericksburg & Potomac. The existing
elevated wooden water storage tank from
the steam era was retained for a number of
years, apparently for filling passenger diesel
water tanks with treated water for their steam
heating boilers. The Sanford shops serviced
locomotives for running repairs for the five
branchlines, the north and south mainline
turns, the local yard jobs, and Orlando’s
switchers. This could involve a number of
locomotives requiring service each day.
A wye was constructed immediately west
of where the old Sanford & Lake Eustis line
crossed the new bypass, just south of the
shop tracks. The wye tied into a secondary
track immediately west of and parallel to
the southbound mainline. This permitted
diesels to be turned when needed without
entering the mainline. The old Sanford &
Lake Eustis line was dismantled from the
wye east to where it intersected with the old
mainline. The old original South Florida
RR mainline was also dismantled from the
old shop location south to the point where it
intersected with the southern end of the new
bypass near 26th Street. The old Jacksonville,
Tampa & Key West mainline remained
eastward from where it connected with the
northern end of the new bypass for about a
mile to the area of the old shops. A wye that
encompassed the old shop area was retained
with the tail ending at 4th Street. The tracks
were removed from 4th Street to Oak Avenue
(Railroad Way), where the earlier depots
were once located, sometime after 1950. The
wye remains in service today and Auto Train
occasionally uses it to turn locomotives.
The old shops were demolished in the early
1950s soon after the relocation but the 9th
Street Station wasn’t demolished until the
late 1950s. The Railway Express Agency
was located in an annex building of matching
architecture immediately north of the 9th
Street Station. REA did not relocate when the
ACL moved to its new depot on the bypass
but continued to operate from the annex
building until REA went into bankruptcy
in 1975 and shut down. The REA’s annex
was demolished about 1977 and the 9th
Street Station site today is a city park that is
appropriately named Coast Line Park.
Harriet (Hattie) Boyd was an ACL
enginehouse clerk for 28 years before
retiring. She was a descendant of a pioneer
Sanford family and shared her railroad
photos with the Sanford Museum, some of
which were included in both parts of this
article. Ms. Boyd stayed involved after
her retirement with the retired Sanford
railroaders through their local organization
of the Coast Liners. She passed away
February 15, 2010, at the age of 86.
Passenger Service
A number of ACL passenger trains made
scheduled stops in Sanford in the 1950s.
Named trains included the Havana Special
and West Coast Champion from New York.
Numbered locals 275/276 ran at night from
Jacksonville to Lake Alfred on the mainline and then to Winter Haven, Bartow,
Punta Gorda and Ft. Myers; and Nos. 80/89
operated in daylight between Jacksonville
and Tampa.
Continued on page 12
Above: Sanford’s 75-ton steam wrecker, 65099,
was built by Industrial Works in 1911 and was
usually found tied down on the south end of the
car shop tracks waiting for its next call. This 1955
scene shows the wrecker and its boom car. The
wrecker was later replaced by 65417, another
Industrial Works product, that was built in 1912
and purchased second-hand from the RF&P.
—Ken Murdock photo
Left: This November 1965 view of the Sanford
shops, viewed from the new bypass, shows all of
the major shop facilities including the locomotive
tracks, sand facilities, the diesel locomotive
servicing bay, and the large arched roof car repair
shop. The black roof of the shops office and storage
building can be seen beyond the sand facility.
—John Richeson photo, William Cogswell collection
Sanford, Florida: Once a Coast Line Town
7
Left: This August 1966 photo finds GP7 210
at rest beside the large car shop structure.
The new bypass mainline track is to the
far right. —John Richeson photo, William
Cogswell collection
Left below: Columbia, Newberry & Laurens
GP7 100 rests with SD35 1006 beside the
diesel locomotive servicing bay about 1965 at
the Sanford shops. The CN&L unit was one of
five that parent ACL took into its own roster in
the early 1960s and several of them lingered
in their original ACL-style aluminum and purple
colors into the mid-1960s, well after all ACLproper units had been painted black. —John
Richeson photo, William Cogswell collection
Below: The car repair shop, built in the
mid-1920s to service reefers in Rands Yard,
is seen from the south end of the shop area
looking north in this August 1975 scene. The
diesel servicing bay is on the right. —Clayton
Bishop photo
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Above: The Sanford shop office building can be seen in
this view immediately behind the ACL company tank car in
August 1966. The building was built at dock height so parts
and supplies could be easily unloaded from freight cars and
stored in the attached storeroom. The car shop building is
the large structure on the right. —John Richeson photo,
William Cogswell collection
Right: This SCL track profile plan shows the track layout
for the new bypass, shops, Auto Train (across from
the shops), and Rands Yard. It also shows the mileage
adjustments from mileposts A766 to A767 as 5,257 feet,
slightly less than a mile, and from A767 to A771 as only
6,029 feet, considerably less than four miles. The gaps
reflect the reduction in the length of the mainline when the
new bypass was constructed in 1951. The north end of the
new bypass intersected the old mainline at MP A766.
—William Cogswell collection
Right bottom: ACL GP7 214 and F7 424 were laying over
in Sanford next to the new diesel shop waiting for their next
call in 1965. The 214 became CSX 1843 before being retired
on February 19, 1993, and the 424 became SCL 408 before
being traded in to GE on a U36B order. —John Richeson
photo, William Cogswell collection
Below: ACL GP7 212 and F7 395 were laying over on the
locomotive tracks at the Sanford shops in this January 1965
scene. —John Richeson photo, William Cogswell collection
Sanford, Florida: Once a Coast Line Town
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Above: This August 1975 scene gives a good
view of the locomotive sand facility that was south
of the servicing bay. The low structure to the left
is the sand storage and drying facility. —Clayton
Bishop photo
Right: The car repair shop appears to still be
quite active in this July 1977 view taken from the
Auto-Train terminal, yet the shops would close
in less than two years.—Frank Brubaker photo
Right: The old steam-era elevated wood water
tank, diesel fuel storage tank, and the Sanford
wrecker are all captured in this circa-1977 scene
on the south end of the shop complex. The
water tank, kept in service in the diesel era, was
apparently used to provide treated water for the
steam heating boilers of passenger locomotives.
—Frank Brubaker photo
Facing page bottom: It’s August 1975 and a
three-unit lashup of SCL U18Bs is entering the
lead to the locomotive and shop tracks after
returning from Rands Yard. The Sanford shops
car repair structure can be seen to the distant
right and the Auto-Train shops can be seen to
the distant left. —Clayton Bishop photo
Sanford, Florida: Once a Coast Line Town
11
Right: This 1970s scene showed the
passenger station was still heavily
used by the SCL for its passenger
trains, but the freight end had been
leased to Montgomery Ward. The SCL
division offices and dispatching had
been moved to Tampa, but a few local
office functions and the rules training
classroom still occupied part of the
second floor. —William Cogswell photo
Continued from page 7
The ACL continued to operate scheduled
passenger trains on four of its branchlines
out of Sanford for a number of years, always
as mixed service in later years. The first was
on the JT&KW’s S&LE line from Sanford
to Tavares. Service had been expanded to
include Eustis, Ft. Mason, and Leesburg
over the old Florida Southern Railroad, one
of Plant’s purchases that had become part
of the ACL in 1902. This 49-mile line then
became known as the Leesburg Branch and
was served by mixed Nos. 433/434 daily
except Sunday, leaving from Sanford and
returning the same day. Mainline passenger
train connections could be made at both ends
of the line. This line also had an 11.3-mile
spur from Ft. Mason to Umatilla and Altoona
that required a back-up move. The Leesburg
train only backed 4.1 miles to Umatilla when
westbound but backed all the way to Altoona
when eastbound.
The second mixed train service, provided
by Nos. 435/432, made one round trip daily
except Sunday between Altoona and Ft.
Mason. Service was reduced to freight and
express only in early 1950. After passenger
service was discontinued, connections via
Greyhound bus service were offered from
Sanford to Mt. Dora, Tavares, and Eustis
for a few more years. This line was operated
and dispatched by the Jacksonville District
of the Southern Division from Rands Yard
to Leesburg. After the ACL reorganization in
1958 the branch was placed under the Ocala
District and dispatched from there. Another
out-and-back local freight operated between
Tavares and Lane Park, a distance of three
miles, making one round trip daily. It was
discontinued prior to 1940 and the tracks
were removed in 1942.
The second branch was the old Sanford
& St. Petersburg line that became the Trilby
Branch under ACL. Mixed Nos. 439/438
would leave Sanford daily, returning the
same day on the 74.7-mile line to Trilby.
Stops included Winter Garden, Clermont,
Groveland, and Mascotte. Mainline train
connections could also be made at each end
of the branch. Mixed train passenger service
was discontinued in early 1950 when the
run became freight and express only. This
line was also operated and dispatched by the
Jacksonville District from Sanford to Trilby
until ACL reorganized its districts in 1958
when it was placed under the Ocala District.
The third branch with mixed train service
was the SFRR’s Sanford & Indian River
branch that ACL referred to as the Lake
Charm Branch. This 17.6-mile line was
served by mixed Nos. 443/442 Monday,
Wednesday, and Friday, leaving Sanford and
returning the same day with an intermediate
stop in Oviedo. In January 1942 service was
reduced to freight and express only. This
line and the mainline from Jacksonville to
Sanford were operated and dispatched by the
Jacksonville District of the Southern Division
and dispatched from the district headquarters
in the Sanford depot until the end of 1957.
With the 1958 reorganization Sanford was
placed under the Tampa Division and the
division headquarters and dispatching were
moved from Sanford to Tampa.
The fourth branch was the Sanford &
Everglades branch that was acquired from
local farmers in 1913. It ran passenger service
using its Sanford Traction Company trolleys
during 1909 and 1910 with trackage rights on
the ACL’s S&IR branch from Mecca Junction
to S&E Junction. Passenger service had been
discontinued prior to ACL’s acquisition of the
line and it remained freight only. The S&E
was also under the Jacksonville District and
dispatched from Sanford and in 1958 was
placed in the Tampa District.
The fifth branch line served out of
Left: This scene could well have been
1942, soon after EMD’s delivery of
ACL E6 520 in March of that year, but
it was actually 1955. The photo shows
No. 91, the southbound West Coast
Champion, at the south end of the new
depot’s platform. —Ken Murdock photo
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Above: A pair of Amtrak SDP40Fs
are southbound with the Silver
Star in August 1975 crossing the
ACL-built, 114-foot, bascule bridge
over the St. Johns River. The Star
will pass through the community
of Lake Monroe before making its
next scheduled stop in Sanford. At
Auburndale the train will split with one
locomotive taking the Miami section
and the other taking the Tampa
section. —Clayton Bishop photo
Sanford by the ACL, the former Florida
Midland Railway, was built from Longwood
through Apopka and Ocoee before reaching
Kissimmee. When the ACL acquired the
Florida Midland from the Plant System
in 1902 it abandoned the segment from
Longwood to Apopka in 1904 but continued
serving the remainder of the line from Apopka
through Clarcona to Kissimmee. Serving the
branch from Sanford, mixed Nos. 437/436
would operate daily except Sunday, and
follow the S&StP line from Sylvan Lake
Junction to Clarcona. At the Clarcona junction
it would turn south on a connecting track onto
the Florida Midland and proceed south to
Ocoee, Dr. Philips, and Kissimmee. The train
would return to Sanford the same day from the
52-mile one-way run. A mixed train shuttle,
Nos. 440/441, ran between Apopka and
Clarcona. The service on this line was reduced
to freight and express only in September 1941.
The Clarcona–Kissimmee and Clarcona–
Apopka lines were operated and dispatched
by the Jacksonville District of the Southern
Division and dispatched from the district
headquarters in Sanford. Under the ACL
Left: The northbound West Coast
Champion is crossing Monroe Road
in the community of Lake Monroe in
this 1956 scene, having just passed
through Rands Yard. —William
Cogswell photo
reorganization in 1958 the lines were placed
under the Ocala District and dispatched from
there. All districts were renamed as divisions
at the beginning of 1960 in anticipation of the
merger with the Seaboard Air Line Railroad.
When the Florida East Coast’s employees
went on strike in January 1963 ACL’s
Miami trains, originally operating via the
FEC from Jacksonville to Miami, were
rerouted through Sanford and Orlando to
Auburndale. At Auburndale they moved onto
rival Seaboard’s Wildwood–Miami main to
Sanford, Florida: Once a Coast Line Town
13
Right: ACL P-5-B Pacific 1645 and
sister 1634 await their next assignment
at the 7th Street Shops, circa 1945.
—Frank Brubaker collection
continue their trip to Miami, following the
route of the Silver Meteor and Silver Star.
The reroutes affected three ACL trains: the
alternating City of Miami/South Wind from
Chicago; the East Coast Champion; and the
seasonal Florida Special from New York. All
three made scheduled stops at Sanford. Their
east coast passengers were then transferred
to waiting chartered Greyhound buses for
east coast cities not served along the SAL
reroute into Miami from Daytona Beach
south to Stuart. The special connecting bus
service was later dropped because it became
apparent that the strike was going to be
lengthy. Connections were then made with
scheduled Greyhound bus service.
William Cogswell’s Early Memories
Trips with my parents from St. Petersburg,
where we lived from 1939 through 1942, to
DeLand, Florida, gave me my first views
of Sanford’s rail facilities. The trips were
either all-bus via Tampa on the Florida
Motor Lines (later Greyhound Lines) or
on Atlantic Coast Line trains from Tampa
after a bus ride from St. Petersburg. We rode
Train 80 (the Tampa-Jacksonville local) or
92 (the Tamiami Champion streamliner, later
renamed the West Coast Champion). Both
the bus and trains traveled via Sanford.
Truthfully speaking I noticed more of
Sanford’s railroad facilities coming through
on local No. 80. It stopped at every cow
pasture en route and lingered at Sanford’s
old 9th Street Station for at least 15 minutes
to change the engine crew and to load
passengers, mail, and express. The Tamiami
Champion, being one of the Coast Line’s
premier passenger trains, used only about
half the time of No. 80. While at Sanford
No. 80 loaded a very large amount of railway
express shipments. After leaving the 9th
Street passenger station it passed through
Rands Yard at a slower speed than No. 92,
giving me a better view of the yard from the
straight-back 1000-class coach on the end
of the train. I remember seeing the large ice
house and icing platforms and what seemed
like hundreds of yellow reefers in the yard
awaiting loading of fruits and vegetables.
Just north of Rands Yard No. 80 slowed for
the station stop at the community of Lake
Monroe, a flag stop at that time, I believe.
Just north of the Lake Monroe station
we passed “MR” interlocking tower that
controlled the signals and switches from
double to single track over a swing-truss
bridge spanning the St. Johns River.
Our trips through Sanford on the Florida
Motor Lines bus didn’t provide many
railroad views because their route at that
time used Park Avenue to gain access to the
bus station, missing the mainline railroad
tracks five blocks to the west. After leaving
the downtown Sanford bus terminal the bus
traversed the highway along the south shore
of Lake Monroe, missing more railroad
views until nearing the community of Lake
Monroe. Here we would get a good view
of MR Tower and the ACL bridge over
the St. Johns where Lake Monroe flows
into the river. Upon crossing the river we
left Seminole County and entered Volusia
County. The highway bridge was just east
of and parallel to the railroad bridge, thus
providing a good view of the railroad bridge.
Visiting Sanford, 1943–1945
After moving to DeLand in September
1942 I didn’t see much of Sanford except
from a high school bus while traveling to
the football games between the DeLand
Bulldogs and the Sanford Celery Feds. My
Dad didn’t have an automobile, and besides,
gasoline was being rationed during World
War II. In May 1945, about the time the war
with Germany ended, I purchased my first
Left: This scene in the early to mid1940s finds an almost-new diesel on
the property near the old shops, but
steam can still be seen in the distance
and would be around for a few more
years. Switcher 605 is an EMD NW2
built in May 1942 and appears to have
been recently delivered. —Hattie Boyd
photo, Sanford Museum collection
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motor vehicle, a homemade motorbike with
a Briggs & Stratton motor for power. One
of my first trips on my motorbike was to
Sanford, hoping to see some railroad yards
and action. The war was still raging with
Japan and hardly any motor vehicle traffic
was on U.S. highways 17 and 92 between
DeLand and Sanford. After passing through
Orange City, the highway traffic dwindled
down to almost nothing (the town of DeBary
didn’t exist until about 1949) until reaching
the Florida East Coast grade crossing at
Benson Junction Road where it picked up
a bit. Continuing south and after crossing
the St. Johns River at Lake Monroe I turned
right on Old Monroe Road, crossed the
Coast Line tracks, passed the community
of Lake Monroe’s railroad station and U.S.
Post Office, and continued south on Old
Monroe Road to 1st Street (State Road 46).
I turned left on 1st Street and headed east
toward downtown Sanford. Arriving at the
1st Street railroad crossing at the south end
of Rands Yard, I stopped when I noticed the
crossing guard coming out of his shanty with
his stop sign to halt motor vehicle traffic for
an approaching train. The train was a very
early Alco yard switcher (probably an S-2)
with a short string of cars. Needless to say the
switcher was painted purple and silver and
was switching a nearby siding. That was my
very first sighting of a diesel yard switcher!
I then continued east on 1st Street about
a half mile to French Avenue, made a right
turn and headed south to about 6th Street
where I noticed what looked like an engine
terminal on the west side of French Avenue.
I don’t remember seeing the roundhouse or
turntable but saw what seemed to be an engine
shed with numerous 4-6-2 types, a couple
of light 2-8-2s, and a Ten-wheeler. I didn’t
enter railroad property — there were lots
of no trespassing signs. By then it was late
afternoon and I needed to start on my 18-mile
trip back to DeLand before dark. I was only 15
and would have been in serious trouble had I
arrived home after dark with only a flashlight
for a headlight. I don’t remember going to
Sanford on any more railfan trips until 1952
after I finished high school and my four-year
tour of duty in the U.S. Army.
Employment with the ACL
In June 1952, after fulfilling my military
obligation, I was unemployed. My longtime
friend Steve Bishop, who was second trick
leverman-telegrapher at the Lake Monroe
MR Tower, invited me to attend a nonoperating crafts employee safety meeting
with him. The meeting was held in the
baggage room at the old ACL passenger
station at 9th Street. The meeting was
chaired by Coast Line Jacksonville District
Trainmaster J.W. “Jimmy” Plant and 20 to
25 employees were in attendance. Plant later
became Coast Line’s manager of Trailer
Train (piggyback) operations.
After the meeting Mr. Plant, speaking
for the district superintendent, asked me if
I would be interested in a job as a student
agent-operator telegrapher on the extra
board. I would have to learn telegraphy on
my own (this was mandatory). He stated
that a telegraphy school was in Jacksonville
Above: ACL P-4 Pacific 456 waits
for a call on the ready track at the 7th
Street Shops in November 1945.
—Hattie Boyd photo, Sanford Museum
collection
where I would be required to attend at my
own expense, or I could get a friend to teach
me the trade. I thanked him for the offer and
said I would think it over. My friend Steve
Bishop offered to help me and be a reference.
A week or so later I happened to speak
to Mr. James Locklair, the Coast Line
signal maintainer who was in DeLand at
the time, and told him of the offer by Mr.
Plant of the telegrapher-operator’s job. Mr.
Locklair said that, in his opinion, operators’
jobs were in decline and were being
abolished at some ACL points due to new
installations of centralized traffic control and
the abandonment of some branchlines. CTC
was the wave of the future and train order
operators and telegraphers in most cases
would not be needed! Mr. Locklair offered
me an application for employment in ACL’s
Communications & Signaling Department
and if I would fill it out, he would forward
it to the Chief Engineer, Communications &
Signaling, in Wilmington, North Carolina,
for consideration. I submitted my application
after deciding that Signal Department
employment would be the best for me.
On September 5, 1952, I was offered a
position as a signal helper with a pay rate
of $1.659 per hour and was told to report to
ACL’s medical examiner in Sanford, Dr. J.
N. Tolar, for a physical examination. After
Sanford, Florida: Once a Coast Line Town
15
Left: Co-author William Cogswell’s
boss, ACL Signal Foreman Carl
Peacock, chews on his cigar while
working at his desk in his camp car
office in September 1953. His office
and quarters were in one end of the
bunk car, a former steel underframe
passenger car. —William Cogswell
photo
the physical I was told to report to Captain
Graham, ACL’s property protection officer
(railroad police), for a personal interview,
also at Sanford. After the Sanford exam and
interview I was told to report to Police Chief
Stone at the DeLand police station, also for
a personal interview. I was instructed to take
my honorable U.S. Army Discharge and
DeLand High School graduation diploma
with me for the personal interviews.
Later that same month I was accepted for
employment in the Signal Department and
started out as a signal helper. By September
1953 I was promoted to assistant signalman
and was assigned to the “Camp Cars Signal
Gang” in the charge of Signal Foreman
J.C. (Carl) Peacock. Mr. Peacock’s office
and sleeping accommodations were in a
separate room at one end of the bunk car
near one of the vestibules. Our bunk car
was a former Pullman wooden sleeper with
steel underframe, about 1910 vintage. All
the ACL signal foremen, about eight at that
time, had the same accommodations. The
foremen and their accommodations went
wherever the signal gangs were assigned.
I spent most of the summer of 1953 on
a Coast Line signal gang on the Tampa
District, Southern Division, in downtown
Lakeland, helping to replace the main
railroad highway crossing signals with
modern automatic crossing gates including
flashing lights. After finishing the Lakeland
job Carl Peacock’s signal gang camp cars
were assigned to Sanford on the Jacksonville
District of the Southern Division in late
September in conjunction with the opening
of the new passenger and freight station
on the new bypass just west of Persimmon
Avenue. The station was in the final stages
of construction and was to be open for
business around October 1, 1953, with a
grand opening set for later in the month.
The signal gang’s job was to install new
highway rail crossing protection devices
on the new cutoff; specifically, flashing
lights with crossbucks and warning bells at
Southwest Road, Country Club Road, and
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25th Street — all south of the new station.
Other jobs that the signal gang performed
included removing old signal apparatus
from the old 9th Street Station, including
in the dispatcher’s and operator’s offices
and passenger platforms, as well as the old
switch machines and dwarf signals that were
used to control train movements in and out
of the 9th Street Station. Most of these items
had been installed in a modernization project
in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In late
1953 a contractor (Union Switch & Signal
Company) was in the process of installing
CTC between Winter Park and Sanford,
including the new cutoff that started around
27th Street. The CTC replaced an automatic
permissive block signal system that had been
installed in 1931–32.
Our camp cars had been spotted in the
covered car repair shed at the new shops
where electricity and drinking water were
available. Blue flags were attached to the
camp cars telling switch-engine crews not
to move them because of the electric and
water connections. As an assistant signalman
and qualified lineman, I spent a lot of my
time while in Sanford with the crew that
was stringing line wire used to control
crossing signal circuits and installing heavy
concrete battery boxes. About October 10,
after finishing the crossing signal work and
removing the signal apparatus, we still had a
few days left before the camp cars would be
moved to Palatka by the local freight, where
another job awaited us.
With extra time on our hands, Signal
Supervisor Johnny Wainwright, who was
in charge of the Orlando-Sanford area,
arranged with our foreman, Mr. Peacock,
to have our gang paint all the old Style S
semaphore signal masts and ladders with
aluminum paint between the Lake Monroe
bridge (Valdez), MP 763, and Orange City,
MP 755, or as far as we could go until our
time ran out. He arranged to get all the
aluminum paint that we would need because
we had very little in our camp car stock,
plus extra scrapers, wire brushes, and paint
brushes. Starting out we found that most of
the ladders and some of the masts needed
extensive scraping and wire-brushing and
that really slowed us down. We had about 13
men scraping and painting, not including the
foreman and lead signalman who bossed the
job. At that time double track extended all
the way to Orange City. We used our gang
motor car and trailer, plus our two-man motor
car, plus the Sanford signal maintainer’s
motor car and trailer, to haul all the men
and paint to the jobs. With the old Style S
semaphore signals spaced about one mile
apart for 65–70 mph running with the current
of traffic, we figured we had at least 14
masts and ladders to paint. Needless to say,
we didn’t reach Orange City. All the extra
scraping and wire-brushing slowed us down,
plus one of the men stepped on a rattlesnake
when descending from a ladder, creating a
lot of excitement. Luckily the rattler wasn’t
coiled and was quickly killed. My working
1st Quarter 2011
Right: SCL U18B 361 switches a feed
mill in Sorrento on State Road 46 on
the Umatilla Subdivision in December
1977. The tracks were removed in
1980 from Sorrento to Sylvan Lake
and the remaining segment was
served from the Orlando Subdivision.
—Clayton Bishop photo
days soon ended at Sanford in 1953 and our
signal gang moved on to Palatka.
In 1959, a few years after I left the ACL,
CTC was extended from the south side of
Sanford to Lake Monroe, a distance of five
miles. This segment was then controlled by
the Tampa dispatcher and the MR Tower was
no longer needed and was soon demolished.
Ken Murdock’s
Early Sanford Memories
When I was quite young a railroad strike
had shut down the Coast Line. The local
Orlando Sentinel newspaper covered the
strike and showed many diesels tied up at
Sanford. My dad, knowing my passion for
trains, suggested that we ride up to Sanford,
18 miles north of Orlando, and see them. I
was, of course, agreeable so we drove up to
Sanford on a Sunday afternoon. That scene
of so many locomotives in one place was
one I didn’t soon forget. I had to return.
In 1955, when I was 14, my best friend,
who was also a railfan, and I planned a trip
back to Sanford to watch trains. We caught
ACL’s Train 80 at 11:20am in Orlando. This
was the Tampa-Jacksonville local that made
stops at Winter Park, Maitland, Altamonte
Springs, and Longwood before arriving in
Sanford at 12:10pm. We had about two hours
in Sanford before our southbound train
arrived. While there, we walked across the
mainline tracks to the shops to take a few
photographs, ignoring the “Keep Out” signs.
We were never asked to leave. Actually, the
workers were very hospitable and we were
even offered a ride in an F7B unit that a
hostler had to move. We didn’t have much
of a view from the B-unit but we thoroughly
enjoyed the short ride. We caught the
southbound local, No. 89, at 2:25pm for the
return back to Orlando, arriving at 3:35pm.
We later made a second trip to Sanford in
1956. This time we rode our motorcycles so
as to have more time to visit the facilities.
My only regrets today are that I didn’t own
a good camera and that I didn’t take more
pictures, especially with color film.
SCL Brings Changes
The merger of the ACL and Seaboard
into the Seaboard Coast Line in 1967
brought about many changes to service out
of Sanford. The mainline from Jacksonville
to Sanford became the Sanford Subdivision
of the Tampa Division, and the main from
Sanford south to Tampa became the Lakeland
Subdivision of the Tampa Division. Many
branchlines became redundant after the
merger because many towns on them were
served by both railroads and therefore
abandonments began.
Two miles of the Lake Charm Branch from
Oviedo to Lake Charm were abandoned in
1967. The remainder of the line was retained
and a connection was made at Oviedo to
the former SAL line from Orlando in 1967.
From this point the old SAL was retained
to Aloma, on the east side of Winter Park,
to provide service to a light industrial area.
The remainder of SAL’s line from Aloma to
Orlando was abandoned in 1969 (see “When
Seaboard Ran Trains from Wildwood to
Orlando and Lake Charm” in the Second
Quarter 2009 issue of Lines South). The
rest of this line then became the Aloma
Subdivision of the Tampa Division. Then,
in 1995, eight miles of track from Aloma to
Oviedo and 6.5 miles from Oviedo north to
a point called Wagner were abandoned and
removed. This is now the end of the line;
several customers are located here in a light
industrial area near Winter Springs.
Under the SCL Leesburg was now serviced
by the former SAL branch from Wildwood
to Orlando. The portion of the old ACL
Left: SCL through freight 876
northbound with a six-unit lashup has
made a stop in Sanford for a crew
change on this June 1979 day. Fourth
back was a Louisville & Nashville unit
and the last engine is from the Frisco;
both roads’ power was common during
this period. —Ken Murdock photo
Sanford, Florida: Once a Coast Line Town
17
Right: This Seaboard System train is
on the Aloma Subdivision in December
1985. It has turned on a wye about a
mile back and is backing into Oviedo
on ex-ACL trackage. Once in Oviedo
it will again reverse and proceed
to Aloma on the ex-SAL trackage
that came from Orlando prior to the
SCL merger. The 0-4-0T Alco steam
locomotive belonged to Richard
Perkins and frequently met the Aloma
switcher on the adjacent private
siding. —Ken Murdock photo
Leesburg Branch from Ft. Mason to Leesburg
was no longer needed because the SAL tracks
from Leesburg to Tavares provided a shorter
route, so the ACL portion was abandoned in
1967. The branch from Sanford now went
only as far as Umatilla and became the
Umatilla Subdivision of the Tampa Division.
Having no customers between Sanford and
Sorrento, 13 miles between Sylvan Lake and
Sorrento were abandoned in 1980. Sorrento
and Mt. Dora could then be serviced off
the former SAL branch from Orlando to
Wildwood through a connection in Tavares.
Sanford had lost another branch line.
The Trilby Branch became the Groveland
Subdivision of the Tampa Division. The line
was abandoned west of Groveland to Mabel
in 1970. With no customers between Sanford
and Forest City, these additional 11.5 miles
were abandoned in 1983, thus eliminating
Sanford’s ability to service this branch.
Forest City was very close to the former
SAL Orlando–Wildwood branch and could
now be easily served from Orlando off this
line by building a connecting track at the
junction at Toronto.
The ex-ACL Florida Midland branch was
abandoned from Dr. Philips to Kissimmee
in 1950 and from Apopka to Clarcona in
1966, both in the ACL era. SCL operated
the remainder as its Dr. Philips Subdivision
of the Tampa Division from Ocoee to Dr.
Philips. In 1983 the entire subdivision was
abandoned when a packinghouse customer
at Dr. Philips closed.
The former ACL Sanford & Everglades
branch from Beck Hammock to Mecca
Junction on the southern end was abandoned
in 1957 by the ACL. In 1970 SCL abandoned
the remainder of the branch on the northern
end, from S&E Junction to Beck Hammock,
because the growers had relocated to larger
muck farms in South Florida. Thus the only
branch left from the original five served by
the Coast Line from Sanford was a portion
of the Lake Charm Branch now called the
Aloma Subdivision by SCL.
The importance of Sanford as a
railroad hub continued to diminish as
each branchline was abandoned. Sanford
still serviced the Aloma Branch and the
mainline customers, both north and south,
including the DeLand Branch (see Lines
S outh , First Quarter 2010). However,
fewer locomotives and cars were requiring
service or repair and fewer crews were
being called. The end of the Sanford shops
was obviously drawing near.
Auto-Train
Eugene K. Garfield established the
original Auto-Train service that ran between
Lorton, Virginia, and Sanford. Sanford was
selected as the southern terminal because of
its central location in Florida. Furthermore,
the terminal site was already owned by
SCL, adjacent to its mainline, and available
for quick lease. Garfield had reached an
operating agreement with the SCL and the
Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac just
prior to the formation of Amtrak and was
therefore exempt from Amtrak’s exclusive
rights to carry passengers. The Sanford
terminal site was on the old mainline where
it met the north end of the 1951 bypass.
Auto-Train built a terminal building,
loading and unloading ramps and yards,
Left: Amtrak SDP40F 647 is
northbound and has made a scheduled
stop at Sanford in June 1978. The
trackside refueling and water racks
at each end of the passenger loading
platform were still in use at that time.
The Auto-Train shops are at the left.
—Frank Brubaker photo
18
LINES
SOUTH
1st Quarter 2011
Right: Auto-Train has just departed
its Sanford terminal northbound and
is passing through Rands Yard with a
lashup of four U36Bs on this April day
in 1976. Auto-Train would last only five
more years. —Clayton Bishop photo
locomotive and car shops, a locomotive and
car wash facility, and service and storage
tracks. Sanford was Auto-Train’s only shop
facility. Rands Yard was used to store extra
equipment waiting to be refurbished.
On December 7, 1971, the first train
arrived in Sanford from Lorton. Auto-Train
used SCL crews to operate its trains and so
helped to offset some SCL jobs being lost
as local services were being reduced. The
company was very successful at first but
a series of bad derailments in 1976 took
their toll. Auto-Train went into bankruptcy
on September 8, 1980, and was unable to
recover; the last train ran on April 30, 1981
(for the complete story of Auto-Train, see
Lines South, Third and Fourth Quarters
2003).
Amtrak saw a golden opportunity to
move in and resume Garfield’s dream, a
very popular service with the northern
snowbirds. Amtrak took over Auto-Train’s
facilities in both Lorton and Sanford and
ran is first train (using the same name but
without the hyphen) on October 30, 1983.
The facilities in Sanford have changed
very little over the years except for the
passenger terminal that was at first enlarged
and was now finally replaced in the fall of
2010. The Sunset Limited was serviced at
the Sanford Auto Train facility when it ran
from Los Angeles to Orlando. However, the
train was terminated east of New Orleans
after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005 and it
seems doubtful that the Sunset will return
to Florida.
Above: The new but short-lived
Seaboard System has a pair of its
freshly painted GE U36Bs rolling
through Sanford with a short
southbound piggyback train in March
1985. Auto Train is now in the hands of
Amtrak and the reborn service’s colors
can be seen to the right at the Sanford
facility. —Clayton Bishop photo
Above: Auto Train’s new $10.5 million
Sanford terminal building was opened
in the fall of 2010. Funds came
from the American Recovery and
Investment Act. —Ken Murdock photo
Left: The southbound Auto Train has
arrived on time on June 24, 2010, and
its autoracks have been spotted and
are being unloaded on this hot Florida
morning. The headlight of the Sanford
switcher can be seen on the far right; it
has just left the mainline and is starting
out on the Aloma spur to service
customers. —Ken Murdock photo
Sanford, Florida: Once a Coast Line Town
19
Right: The American Freedom Train,
with ex-SP 4-8-4 4449, is waiting
on the northbound mainline at the
Sanford depot just before sunrise on
January 15, 1977. Soon its train would
load passengers for a one-way trip to
Jacksonville as it left its Florida tour.
Co-author William Cogswell boarded
that day and enjoyed his ride in an
observation dome car. —Central
Florida Chapter NRHS collection
SCL Closes the Shops
The Sanford shops had their beginning
with the South Florida Railroad when that
company built its shops there in the early
1880s. The Sanford shops, while in two
locations, had served four railroad names
during nearly a century of operation. The
Seaboard Coast Line was consolidating a
number of operations and facilities in the late
1970s and could no longer justify the need
for the Sanford shops. Union rules required
a 90-day notice for closures and layoffs so in
late 1978 the railroad made the decision to
close the facility and gave the required notice.
Lines South Editor Emeritus Joe Oates
was the car shop foreman at Sanford for SCL
from late 1971 until March 1979 when the
shops were closed. He was the last employee
to leave the facility and was responsible
for all remaining company business and
dispositions (see his story of this event,
“I Am Sanford,” in the Railroad Reading
section of the March 2006 Trains magazine).
Steam in the SCL Years
During the SCL years two steam
locomotives called on Sanford where they
laid over and were serviced. The first was
the American Freedom Train on January 15,
1977, powered by ex-Southern Pacific 4-8-4
“Daylight” 4449. The American Freedom
Train loaded passengers in Sanford for a
one-way trip to Jacksonville as it exited
Florida. Co-author William Cogswell
boarded in Sanford that morning and rode
in the dome observation car to Jacksonville.
Then in July 1978 the Clinchfield 1, an
1882-vintage 4-6-0, came to Florida being
pushed by a pair of F7B units. It spent the
night in Sanford and was serviced there
before leaving for Tampa the next day where
it participated in the celebration of Teddy
Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.
Ross Rowland’s ex-Chesapeake & Ohio
4-8-4 614 powered the Family Lines Safety
Express as it toured Florida in February
20
LINES
SOUTH
and March 1981 but by this time the
Sanford shops had closed. Consequently the
locomotive was serviced in Orlando and ran
excursions from there.
Sanford’s Railroads Today
Sanford continues to be a crew call point
for some CSX mainline freight trains and
the local switching job. Currently CSX
runs manifest freight Q455 southbound
from Waycross, Georgia, to Taft (Orlando),
Florida, seven days a week. It makes
intermediate setouts and pickups at
Jacksonville, Pecan (Palatka), and Rands
Yard at Sanford. CSX Q456, Q455’s
northbound counterpart, operates Monday
through Friday with Saturday and Sunday
added depending on traffic volume. It will
Above: Clinchfield’s One Spot arrived
at Rands Yard in July 1978 where it
would lay over for the night and be
serviced before leaving for Tampa the
next day. The little 4-6-0, built in 1883,
had an impressive string of passenger
cars in tow but most of the work was
done by the pair of F7B units right
behind it. —Frank Brubaker photo
pick up a Sanford crew if heavy switching
en route causes the crew to go on the law.
The Sanford Local, A766, goes on duty
at 6:00am to service customers north and
south on the mainline and the DeLand and
Aloma branches (now called spurs). One
locomotive is normally assigned to Sanford
for the local switching job, usually a GP38-2
1st Quarter 2011
Above: It’s March 1985 and the
Sanford shops have been closed
for six years. The tracks remained
for several years and were used for
car storage. Coca-Cola magnate
Chapman S. Root stored several of
his private rail cars there including
his ex-Milwaukee Road Dell Rapids
Skytop observation lounge captured in
this scene. The car is now on display
at the Daytona Museum of Arts and
Sciences. —Clayton Bishop photo
or GP40-2. Service on the branches is on an
as-needed basis only.
The Orlando Utilities Commission’s
unit coal trains operate from mines in
Kentucky and West Virginia and pass
through Sanford three to four times a week
en route to the OUC power plant southeast
of Orlando. Crew changes for these trains
can happen at Sanford, Taft Yard, or at
the power plant depending on where the
crew’s time in service expires. Intermodal
Q177-Q178 from Jacksonville to Taft Yard
runs six days per week and Sunday if needed
using a Sanford-based crew for the return
to Jacksonville. Other intermodals pass
through Sanford en route to Orlando and
Tampa but do not make set-outs or pick-ups.
CSX plans to sell 61 miles of its mainline
from DeLand south to Poinciana, just below
Kissimmee, to the Florida Department
of Transportation for commuter rail
service. The Florida Legislature approved
the funding on December 8, 2009. This
commuter operation, named SunRail,
will further reduce mainline freight traffic
through Sanford. It will require mainline
freight traffic to operate at night or be
rerouted via the ex-Seaboard line through
Wildwood to Tampa or to a new intermodal
yard being built in Winter Haven to serve
Orlando. The target date for the first phase to
be in operation is 2013 but a liability dispute
between Amtrak and the Florida DOT
delayed the project about four months before
being resolved in early December 2010.
The project is again on hold as Florida’s
newly elected governor reviews the state’s
budget deficit and its future is uncertain
as this article goes to press. Seven diesels
from Motive Power of Boise, Idaho, and
four double-level coaches and nine doublelevel cab cars from Bombardier of Canada
Left: The ruins of the City Ice & Fuel
Company’s gigantic icing facility,
captured in this December 2000
photo, remained in Rands Yard for
many years after it was shut down.
Demolition was finally completed in
2009. By the late 1930s ACL News
called City Ice & Fuel the largest ice
plant in the world. In 1946 it was preicing 400 cars daily using 80 men.
—William Cogswell photo
are planned for purchase for the first phase.
Planned servicing facility and storage for the
new equipment will be constructed in Rands
Yard. A new commuter station is planned to
be constructed near where State Road 46 (1st
Street) crosses the mainline at the south end
of Rands Yard.
Amtrak leased the passenger end of the
1953 former ACL Sanford passenger and
freight depot from CSX for its Silver Star
and Silver Meteor (and for a few years the
Floridian and Sunset Limited). The depot
wasn’t maintained for many years and fell
into disrepair. Vagrants set fire to the freight
end of the building but Amtrak continued
to use the passenger end. The facility’s
Sanford, Florida: Once a Coast Line Town
21
Left: CSX local A766 is nearing the
end of the Aloma spur at a point
called Wagner with a string of covered
hoppers on June 3, 2010. The cars
will be set out for a customer in a light
industrial complex near the end of the
line and the locomotive will then pick
up several gondola loads of scrap
from another customer. The engine
will use the run-around track to move
to the opposite end of the train before
returning to Sanford. —Ken Murdock
photo
condition deteriorated to the point that
Amtrak finally ended service to Sanford
in August 2005 except for Auto Train. The
depot was demolished in January 2010
and Amtrak’s “Silver Service,” the Silver
Meteor (Nos. P097-P098) and the Silver Star
(P091-P092), pass through Sanford daily but
no longer stop.
Auto Train will apparently be around
for the foreseeable future. The train’s new
terminal, built adjacent to the old one, opened
in October 2010 at a cost of $10.5 million.
Auto Train operates P052 northbound and
P053 southbound daily; Superliner cars and
GE Genesis locomotives are the norm today
and the service continues to be very popular.
Sanford remains the main mechanical and
maintenance shop for Auto Train.
Above: Conrad Yelvington’s GP30
is tied down next to the gravity
dumping conveyor at the company’s
rock yard in Sanford located at
the south end the former site of
the Sanford shops. The unloading
process is the same as that used to
unload coal trains at many power
plants. —Ken Murdock photo
22
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SOUTH
Below: TransFlow Terminal Services,
Inc., a CSX subsidiary, built this 33car transloading facility for the bulk
transfers immediately west of the
diesel shop’s location. Part of the site
is where the old car shop once stood.
Covered hoppers and tank cars are
typically spotted here for transloading
to trucks. —Ken Murdock photo
New Bulk Commodity Facilities
TransFlow Terminal Services Company,
Inc., a CSX subsidiary, has built a 33-car
transloading facility for the transfer of bulk
materials immediately west of where the
diesel shop was located. This facility, one
of 58 owned by CSX, handles the transfer
of bulk commodities such as chemicals, dry
bulk, ethanol, food grade products, plastics
and waste materials from railroad tank cars
and covered hopper cars to trucks.
Conrad Yelvington Distributors, a major
supplier of aggregate for the construction
and landscaping industries, recently
located a rock yard just south of where
the new shops once stood. The rock yard
receives unit trains of rock on CSX trains
K950-K951 from Miami; K968-K969 and
K981-K982 from Winchester, Georgia (near
Junction City); K791-K792 from Cayce,
South Carolina; and K795-K796 from
Birmingham, Alabama. Train frequencies
vary with demand but average about weekly
for each except that K950-K951 averages
about once a month. CSX sets out the
1st Quarter 2011
Above: ACL built this freight depot in the
late 1920s on the site of the old Jacksonville,
Tampa & Key West Railway freight depot just
south of First Street on Myrtle Avenue. The
two-story freight office, located on the blank
end, has been demolished. Rail access was on
the left side and trucks were on the right. The
building is no longer owned by the railroad and
has been modified. —Ken Murdock photo
Right: Plant’s former 1887 PICO Hotel is seen
in Sanford on March 1, 2007. It has been well
preserved on the exterior with only the awning,
standing seam metal roof and copper onion
dome missing. The white building to its rear
was also built by Plant as an annex to the
hotel but it has been heavily modified on the
exterior. —Ken Murdock photo
hopper cars at Rands Yard and picks up the
empties. Conrad Yelvington uses its own
locomotive, a GP30, to pick up, unload,
and return the hopper cars to Rands Yard.
Conrad also owns most of the hoppers used
in this service, though some from CSX are
used as well. While unloading, the Conrad
Yelvington locomotive uses about a half
mile of the old Tavares branch (S&LE)
right-of-way as it pulls the hoppers through
the gravity-dump receiving conveyor.
Interestingly, Conrad Yelvington operates
former ACL GP7 100 at its Gainesville,
Florida, facility painted in the ACL black
scheme. Keeping the unit in its historic ACL
colors was a condition of the purchase from
its previous owner, North Florida Chapter
NRHS. The unit was never rebuilt and so
retains its original high short hood.
Rands Yard lost its importance when
perishable crop shipments declined and
many of its tracks have been removed.
Several tracks remain in Rands Yard
today and most are used for car storage,
Sanford’s set-outs and pick-ups, and Conrad
Yelvington’s rock train set-outs and pickups. The proposed addition of the SunRail
shops and equipment storage in Rands Yard
and the new commuter rail station will help
restore a sense of purpose for the yard.
Sanford, Florida — once a Coast Line
district headquarters and home to a major
railroad shop, a major agricultural shipping
center, and terminus for trains running on
five branchlines — has lost much of its
importance as a railroad town. However,
with the Auto Train terminal and shops
and the coming of SunRail’s shops and
related facilities, Sanford’s ties to the
railroad industry will continue though on a
smaller scale. Many retired and a few active
railroaders still call it home and the retired
Sanford railroaders from both ACL and SCL
have a very active Coast Liners club.
Acknowledgements
We thank Alicia Clarke, curator of the
Sanford Museum, for providing numerous
historic photographs and other historic
information. We also thank the following
for providing technical and historic data
from various sources: Dennis Snyder, Kevin
Andrusia, Associate Editor Bill Dusenbury,
Warren McFarland, Elizabeth A. Harkey
(William Cogswell’s daughter), Don Hensley,
and Wayne Hardin, a Sanford native and the
son and grandson of ACL engineers.
Sanford, Florida: Once a Coast Line Town 23