bit of a bittersweet session over at the Farnham’s Florida East Coast Railroad. A couple of us backed out of club obligations to be there. You see, it’s rumored (strongly (by the hosts)) that the FEC will be coming down soon. We might only have a couple of sessions left on the old girl.

A couple of decades ago, my operations were pretty much restricted to a round-robin group in Orlando. The FEC was one of my first “away game” railroads. I don’t even remember how I got my invite. But that was the gateway that introduced me to the NMRA and several other distant lines (which I run on nowadays). And, back when the FEC was NMRA-affiliated, it’s what got me in on the Journal Box, a newsletter I helmed for four years. So yes, the FEC and I have a lot of history.

Originally I was on the roster for dispatcher, but Doug really wanted to give it a shot. I think I was going to be trim but Ken figured he’d better copilot the panel. So I took on Ken’s jobs on the road. Don’t thrown me into the briar patch, you know? Seriously, I love dispatching but I also like running trains sometimes, too.

First job was a down-the-drain run from Cocoa over to Buenaventura aboard 915, a local working the local industries and sheds. As I came into town, I noticed that I had only a pull from Stark Truss, and nothing was in or out at Miller, which opened up my drill track quite a bit. This being the case, I broke railroad SOP and pulled from the truss with my caboose, storing both on the weedy drill. This cut out a bit of fiddling at the end of the run, and would only bite me if I used up too much of my working drill space. It didn’t, but it came down to about 30 spare feet. Stole fire from the gods, I did.

The crew was running really well. We were down a man in the room, but everyone in the crew were experienced men in FEC blue. Nobody bugged anyone with questions, we all just quietly worked. Dispatcher Doug gave us quick greens and our waits were never overlong. Overall, my local got back two hours early, my run-thru freight was a breeze, and my final rock train showed up to dump at City Point where Kyle was working the overloaded Titusville Turn (seven cars into Nehi – that’s gotta be an off-spot record). Anyway, Kyle and I worked around each other and I even spotted some of his cars because I’m (a) such a nice guy and (b) they were in my way. In the end, everything wrapped up nice and neat with a big red bow, and then our hosts were nice enough to take us to dinner afterwards (though I suspect that our usual Mexican place went out of business because they heard about the FEC ending).

Really, I think it was one of the nicest runs of the FEC I’ve attended. The dispatching was top-shelf (to be honest, that pissed me off a bit, when someone does as good a job as I could). The yards were calling the trains out, the radios were working well, and the only storm we got was a distant one that gave us a little sprinkle and some booms.

Good day. Great railroading. I’m going to miss it. But there are rumors that it might be back in some reduced format, and possibly hold operations. We’ll see. Watch this space for details.

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All un-credited photos (and all these damn words) are from Robert R.