HIGHBALLING WITH HIS HEAD TIED-UP ** A clear track ahead and a train following close behind. |
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The years I spent living alongside the railroad tracks were legion it seemed. From the day I was born in a railroad house alongside the single track of the Southern Railway in Edwardsville Alabama, moving to Pompano in 1927 at the age of nine months and living alongside the dual tracks of the Florida East Coast Railway until I married and moved about four blocks from the tracks. Hearing a train whistle and the roar of passing cars put me to sleep at night and woke me in the mornings. The roadbed of the FEC was heavily ballasted with two inch granite rock, the tracks were the heaviest available at the time, 90 # rail spiked to the best cypress ties . These items were necessary to handle the steady traffic of the big, heavy Baldwin 4-6-4 steam engines that ran North and South an average of one every 30 minutes during the hey-day of the railroads, before car and plane travel evolved. There was a section crew about every three miles from Miami to Jacksonville. This was necessary to maintain the tracks due to the amount of traffic that never ceased, day and night. Listening to the clickity-clack of the train wheels as they passed over the joints during the night and on occasion hearing the metallic flap,flap,flap that meant a flat spot on a wheel. Sometimes at night seeing the dull red glow of the bearing box on the axle that meant a "hot-box" and if not stopped along the way and set aside could cause a fire or a wheel running off and cause a wreck. This was the part of living by the tracks I enjoyed, something to watch and hear all the time. That big engine roaring by and the engineers tooting their whistle at me or letting out a blast of live steam and making a big noise. My dad had an annual pass and we could ride a train at anytime and go anywhere on the FEC. We could order passes and ride over any line in the country for free, and we rode several times to other states and I loved every minute of the time I was riding a train. My first trip to Key West was by train in 1935 before the tracks washed away in the hurricane of that year. I departed the railroad in 1943 when I joined the Navy and when I returned in 1946 changes were already taking place with the railroad. Soon after I returned, the railroad sent a train down the line that stopped at every town . This was a STREAMLINE TRAIN, a diesel electric engine, it was something I had only read about briefly. It stopped in Pompano one Saturday about 4 oclock. It was even allowed to block the railroad crossing at the corner of NE 1ST and Flagler ave for an hour and a half while the townspeople toured the entire train from the engine to the club car. What a train this was, being used to the black, dirty, noisy trains of the past, there sat these bright shiney stainless steel cars and the purple engine that belonged to the ATLANTIC COAST LINE railroad that shared the FEC tracks. It sat there with just a soft humming noise, no steam popping off and groaning as steam engines did. Going aboard, one was immediately greeted by uniformed porters that handed you a glass of grape juice. The juice was taken from a huge fountain in the middle of the car that cascaded grape juice that was the same color as the decorations on the train. After the train departed, several days later, a notice was sent to the local papers that the FEC would be purchasing a number of these 'STREAMLINERS' (diesel electrics) and retiring the steam engines. Sometime before the steam engines were replaced, the railroad become concerned about the train whistles of the diesels and they sent a "STREAMLINER" down the line and at every town along the entire line it stopped. This train was equipped with five different whistles and it would blow each one and the townspeople could write down their preference of whistles and the whistle getting the most votes over the line was to be used on the new engines. Now comes the saddest part all, after the FEC had acquired the diesel engines it needed the steam engines were going to be towed to Jacksonville for disposal and on a certain day all the steam engines would be coupled together in Miami and two steam engines would pull them to their final destination. On the day of the event, I loaded my "brownie" box camera, and at the time the train of steam engines were supposed to be arriving in Pompano I was camped alongside the track and not feeling any to good about the passing of the steam engines. The time arrived for the trains to appear and the tracks were empty, there was nothing in sight. Some two hours later I had about given up on the trains and gone back to the house when I heard a train whistle. It wasn't a steam whistle but I grabbed my camera and ran back out of the house to the tracks. Imagine the surprise and shock I received , for coming up the tracks and making a terriffic hissing noise from the plugs removed from the cylinders of the steam engines (to reduce the drag for towing) were about 30 of these huge beautiful black steam engines and to add insult to injury, they were being pulled by, not steam engines as we were told they would be, but by TWO DIESEL ENGINES. I was so shocked I nearly forgot about my camera and the pictures. The reason was forthcoming in a day or so to all the people like myself that looked forward to this event. The reason was, the two steam engines were coupled-up to the engines and to everyone's horror, they didn't have the POWER to pull that much weight and two diesel engines were rounded-up to take their place. This was an embarassment suffered in silence by many people. This was the end of the steam engine as I knew them, I have never ridden a scheduled train pulled by a "STREAMLINER'' other than one excursion train to this day. When you hear a train whistle today in Pompano Beach you are listening to the sound picked for you many, many years ago by OLD TIMERS of Pompano, some still living here today. As I watched those steam engines being dragged away, the noise they were making was almost like they were protesting and suddenly, on the Southbound track a,"STREAMLINER" barreled by and I suddenly realized I was witnessing a historical occasion, the passing of the steam era and the arrival of the diesel electric era.... and I was sad. |