Heat84 I don’t know if you meant metropolitan area, but the North end of the line is in Riviera Beach, which is a couple miles North of WPB
That is correct but I think that section of track from WPB north belongs to CSX and south of that point belongs to FDOT.
BTW if you ever get on a train and find me already riding on it get off at the next station, I seem to bring bad luck to passenger rail systems.
The first time I had been commissioned by Trains Magazine to ride with one of their contract writers as a photographer on the Florida Fun Train, it was a push pull train with two repainted AMTRAK F-40PH’s on each end, the problem was the south locomotive had a blown engine so the north one would be used to pull the consist north and push it back south using the south locomotive as a control cab.
Well due to a number of complications things didn’t go properly, at the north destination a scheduled fuel truck never showed up, a lot of the passengers who where supposed to disembark couldn’t because a scheduled shuttle bus never showed up either, they being paying passengers expecting to go off to places like Busy World where really upset.
I really didn’t care I had all the photographs needed, the writer sitting across from me had most of the article written so it was time to kick back have a few cold ones and enjoy the ride.
However the ride was a bit unnerving because a train that heavy being in push operation will feel like it is being raised up off the tracks and somewhere north of Boca Raton we discovered why it really felt like that, the engineer being way behind schedule had the throttle notched way up, we went through a defect detector and it broadcasted our speed as “96 MPH, no defects CSX defect detector out,” that screwed the engineer as that speed was way over the 79 MPH limit of that section of track and CSX dispatch in Jacksonville monitors and records those playbacks.
The train slowed down a little but too late, however that high speed was burning fuel at higher rate and that turned out to be another problem.
As we crossed over the New River trestle all the cars went dark, the north locomotive ran out of fuel shutting down the prime mover and the head end power unit.
We where riding in a ghost train, the only illumination was the locomotives headlights and the flashing rear end device (FRED).
The train literally coasted from the trestle to just south of Sheridan St where it stooped next to the FFT station, fouling the mainline in the process, I heard the engineer contact CSX dispatch on my handheld advising dispatch the train is stalled on the mainline powerless and out of fuel, dispatch advised the engineer to sit tight as he (dispatch) was going to contact Hialeah and see if they had a locomotive and crew they could send north and drag the now dead FFT back to Hialeah.
A second problem was most of the passengers bolted from the train never bothering to pay their bar tab’s, oh well they never made to Busy World, but at least they got some free drinks.
I think the FFT lasted about another year and went bankrupt, the locomotives which where leased from AMTRAK went back to AMTRAK and the cars went out to a tourist rail line in Colorado.
Then there was a AMTRAK idea, The plan was to emulate the FFT shuttling European tourists entering Port Everglades to the AMTRAK station in Hollywood where they would ride the train up to a station near Busy World where another shuttle would take them to their various hotels.
The once they had spent all their money and where thoroughly sun burnt they would ride the train back to Hollywood and eventually back to their ship at Port Everglades to go back home.
The ride up was uneventful, the ride back not so much, just South of Boca Raton the locomotive hit a vehicle at a grade crossing and the train came to a stop, after about an hour and because by rule the commissary closed 45 minutes before arrival at Hollywood, even though we where sitting still and would be there for a few hours, no one on board could even get a drink of cold water.
I had enough of that BS so I advised the conductor open the effing door I am getting off, I was advised I am not allowed to get off the train, I repeated my request in a less friendly manner, the conductor relented I followed him out a door of the car and he held a flashlight so I could get an idea where the ground was.
I got out my Mini-Maglight and walked north between the rails, to the east I could hear I-95 and to the north I could see what looked like overpass, I found a residential road just west of the tracks followed that until I could turn north and finally figured out I was in Boynton Beach and the road I was on was Boynton Beach Blvd, I called my girlfriend and about a hour or so later she picked both of us up.
That was about the last time I rode a train until I went to GM’s Electro Motive Division’s (EMD) 75 anniversary, while up there I decided to try out a local commuter rail line, while taking photographs and chatting with the engineer I was informed the control car I was riding in had recently come out of the shop after hitting a school bus that was sitting across the tracks.
Back at my hotel room I dug into the history and discovered the school bus driver was a relief driver, she went to drive over the tracks but the light turned red so she stopped over the tracks waiting for a green light.
The commuter train approached but she didn’t get off the tracks the bus was T-Boned ripping the body off the frame severely injuring and or killing many of the children on board.