Do you train gurus know anything about St. Augustine's railroad and streetcar history?
Silly question! Ha! Ha!
This is the older station but still not the 1880s version. This depot has been RECONSTRUCTED pretty close to the same identical lines, by the St. Augustine Fire Department, in it's ORIGINAL location right off US-1. All they did was change the pillars a bit, and add the fire truck house behind the depot. If you stop to visit, they are very kind and have a nice marker on the wall telling the story. From the front porch the restored FEC park is just as it would have looked to winter visitors stepping off the train in 1925.
This photo is not the 1880's station, it is in fact the 1960's prototype for all of the stations on the FEC. Sadly the strike hit just a couple of years after it was complete and the railroad built by the passenger train went FREIGHT ONLY. The Florida Public Utilities Commission stuck Ed Ball's feet in the fire and told him, if he wanted to keep the charter, he WOULD run passenger trains. Ball might have been the meanest SOB on the planet, but he could also be a class act. He restarted the passenger trains which typically were a single engine, coach and a FIRST CLASS, round end Tavern Lounge Observation Car. Trains #1 and #2 ran for another 4 years or so until the case went to the higher courts and the train came back off. Almost overnight the whole railroad did a house cleaning and EVERY depot was torn down except for an isolated few that could be leased. I well remember South Jacksonville, Yelvington, Ormond, New Smyrna Beach and Daytona Beaches beautiful Spanish arched, court yard like station. Daytona was the last to go lasting until about 1990. One day there was a historic station and the NEXT day a lumber yard!
Wonder what would have happened had the depots all been completed. The day of the last train I sat on the bench for hours in the courtyard in your photograph, the station agent had given me sacks of anything not nailed down. Later they shifted the mainline from alongside US-1 to a location behind the massive old shops that once stood north of this depot. Miller Shops rivaled the famous Beech Grove, or Altoona, in sheer size and impression.
This depot is still accessable, there would need to be a new passenger track to spin off the mainline behind the adjacent strip mall, loop past the Cell Tower? and curve back south to rejoin the mainline south of the station. Otherwise, from my snooping around and talking to FEC folks, it really seems like they just locked the doors yesterday... God I miss those days.
