Oveseas Raiload

I am in Key West, Florisa, USA for two days with my daughter. Just a summer break trip where I certainly did not expect to see any trains. Apparently, the Florida East Coast RR once went to Key West. See this url:

http://overseasrailroad.railfan.net/home.html

Very interesting. Henry Flagler had a fight with JD Rockefeller and JD bought him out of the oil business very early in the life of Standard Oil. The buyout required that Flagler no longer attempt to control the business. In return, Flagler was to receive 5 percent of Standard Oil revenues. Not a bad deal it turns out, but very risky at the time.

I will look for more on the RR in Key West today.

 

The causeway was originally built for the railroad in the days before everyone owned cars. I'm suprized I know anything about this; it's amazing what you learn from the History Channel! I hope you find some good information. Should be plentiful concidering the Keys early devolpement is rail driven; literally.

 

Been walking all day. Visited the "standard" places and had lunch at Margaritaville. Found the Overseas Railway Historeum and will visit tomorrow. It is the old FEC depot, I think. Looks like service began Jan 22, 1912. Ended Sep 1, 1935 with a big hurricane that wiped out the tracks and blew whole trains off the track. More tomorrow.

 

Flash,
Interesting stuff! I believe I saw the story on the History Channel a while back... I think the story also told of how they lost lots of workers in the process of building, not just during "the big one".

Harold

 

I wonder if the Key West City Fathers (and Mothers) secretly wish they had modern FEC service? The traffic on US1 south of Marathon is a nightmare.

 

Very interesting to see it on the History channel or something. I do hope that I can catch it sometime.

I went to the Flagler museum today. $5 each adult for admittance. It is a minimal display, but it has three films, black and white, that were made at the time the rr was built. They are all excellent in describing the process of construction, the celebration, and, finally, the demise in 1935 with the big hurricane. I took a few pictures, but they are mostly of maps.

The big item to me was the very large yard in Key West and the very large rr ferries/ships that transported the cars to Cuba for loading with the fresh fruit. This is the main market that Flagler wanted to reach. He felt that he would dominate east coast US trade with the Key West port and controlling the rail traffic north to south through Florida. Flagler died 14 months after the rr was completed.

Anyway, you are correct in it being a massive task to create the over seas route.

BTW, there were several pictures of a layout that modeled this route. It appeared to be HO scale. Anyone know where this layout might be? Or any layout based on the Miami-Key West FEC route?

 

See the Feb 2001 Model Railroader for a great article (8 pages) on the layout I assume you are talking about. Article is entitled "Modeling the railroad that went to sea". The layout is in HO, and it seems that it was professionally built (not to take anything away from the layout, only to emphasize the fine work). I didn't see where it mentioned where the layout was located. I suppose you could try to contact the owner through MR.

Regards

 

Sapacif- Ed has the rigt article, I think they looked at it again recently.
The number of lives lost in the Hurricane are uncertain.
For they didn't keep many records and many of the workers were migratory or "down lucked" military men that didn't want found.
There was something about War pay and things that todays Military get that they didn't.
There was a HEAP of political and business changes because of the whole thing.
Anyways... The History Channel show and some books on it read like an adventure movie.

 

Flagler thought he could control import commerce in the eastern USA if he controlled Key West and the railroad in Florida (FEC) that took the Key West goods from Key West to the north. I would have thought this was not possible as there were still imports from Europe. OTOH, one thing I had not considered was that the transportation in 1900 pretty much did not include trucks and automobiles. So, maybe Flagler was correct. Thus, a major disruption in the service would have, indeed caused great hardship.

Of course, as the roads developed through 1935, it would have not been profitable to rebuild as trucks could replace the rr traffic to Key West.

Perhaps there is some anaology here to the interstate highway system competing with todays rr's 70 years later? "The only thing new is the history you don't know."

[ May 13, 2005, 12:29 PM: Message edited by: sapacif ]