Aerials From An Era Gone By

[Ocklawaha]

Last Kansas City - Florida Special heading home to Jacksonville

I find these comments very refreshing and most interesting. People without any railroad or transit background thinking and figuring out Amtrak's Jacksonville fumble. You all are RIGHT BTW, 100%.

The trains creep through the old station "throat" as they are in a multi-railroad yard and interchange area. This brings them under strict Jacksonville Terminal yard rules, for safety. This would happen no matter if it was New York, LA, St. Louis or Chicago, in fact it's more proof that by rail, we are the "Chicago of Florida".

The new station lovingly refered to as an "AM-SHACK", was a cookie cutter design that was to replace rail stations everywhere. Norfolk, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Poinciana, Jacksonville and perhaps a couple of others were built. Even with the early Amtrak map of Jacksonville and FLorida, nobody could figure out how we could serve that with just 2 tracks and one platform. Bottom line... We didn't, and today those trains - Miamian, Florida Special, Champion, Silver Palm, Palmetto, Floridian, Sunset... are all gone. AMTRAK TRAINS! gone! A popular joke around the railroads at the time was, Amtrak was staffed with non-railroaders at the start (TRUE) as railroaders didn't know how to run passenger serivce (FALSE). So the airline boys, put all the AMSHACKS out of town so the neighbors wouldn't hear the trains land. Uh Huh?

In any case most any decision of Amtrak circa 1974 has to be called into question. The amazine thing is that we still have any national bare bones at all, and that the corporation has managed to live through 35 years of hostile administrations in Washington. Guess that speaks volumes to Americas love afair with trains:

WHO WERE THESE GUYS?
Nixon, who oversaw the creation of Amtrak and whispered, "It's done, we've killed the passenger train".
Ford, who did nothing except assist a bit in Michigan while taking down money for other projects.
Carter, Talked the big enviromental game, then became the worst cutter of all in making a "deal" to save the system but elimination of Chicago-Seattle, Chicago-Jax-Miami, Chicago-Dallas-Houston, 1- New York -Jax - Miami train.
Regan, Inveneted the ZERO budget for Amtrak
Bush, Kept reinventing the ZERO budget for Amtrak
Clinton, Wore a conductor hat and gave a thumbs up to "National Rail" then did nothing to stop the ZERO budget reformers, hackers, and others that continued to cut down the system.
Bush, Re-Re-Reinvented the ZERO budget

McCain - Hates all Mass transit and Amtrak is a no discussion - "MUST GO" in his planned budget, favors no regulation of RR.
Obama - Says he'll help the midwest high speed rail, but wants to re-regulate (which will crash) the rail freight industry.


To the untrained eye, they hear the horror stories: "The Florida East Coast" will never allow passenger cars on their railroad again! Hum? What does this photo say to that? Oh yes it is, FEC Southside near Sunbeam Road... RECENTLY.

Every AMSHACK named above except for Jacksonville has already been boarded up or torn down. It's time we go out to Clifford Lane and do the same. Take it down, and move it home to Union Terminal.

OCKLAWAHA

[leahfu]

I loved seeing all the sand where Regency is now. Brings back memories of the last of my youth in my dad's SUV in the few remaining sand dunes in that area then.

[Lunican]

Look at the parking lot for the Gator Bowl. I guess you could forget about leaving early.

[Jason]

Could they have packed them in any tighter?

[Ocklawaha]

The ancient one speaks:

Don't recall how they did the "Get to your cars" part, but the flow was simple and worked very well. I was a tot and they would pull off the layers row after row JPD took care of it and IT WORKED!

BTW back in the day it would look about the same for Jackson and Lee or Forrest and Lee etc...

OCKLAWAHA