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| Central Florida Railroad Museum (Gerri Bauer photo) |
I love train travel. And sometimes I project the idea of today's comfortable rides onto the conditions available in Florida's pioneer years. Early settlers would have a good laugh at that.
Trains rolled over the steamboat industry in the late 1800s and early 1900s in Florida. Those early rides were no picnics. That came clear to me on a recent visit to the Central Florida Railroad Museum in Winter Garden. The city is part of the Orlando metro area but has a beautiful and walkable downtown historic district.
The railroad museum is well worth a visit. I particularly liked the displays of different railroad lines' cutlery and dishware. Those kind of details bring home for me the day-to-day living in a specific time. The dishware, as you can imagine, was thick, sturdy stoneware. Some was decorated simply but others featured elaborate floral designs. The collection is varied and includes examples from a wide range of railroad lines including Amtrak.
But the first short-line, early trains to pass through the state weren't serving dinner. They primarily transported citrus, although people used them too. There was nothing fancy about these railroads. That's depicted clearly in the numerous photographs of rail cars, equipment, depots and more on display at the museum. Equipment used through the years is also on view and there's a model train display.
The museum is housed in the former depot of the now-defunct Tavares & Gulf Railroad, which operated along a 32-mile track with a 6-mile branch. Established in the 1880s, the railroad was sold in the 1920s and made its last run in 1969.
I'm most interested in its early years during the pioneer era. Museum literature and displays say the railroad, in those days, was better known locally as Tug & Grunt instead of Tavares & Gulf. That's because it kept derailing. In 1905, it held a national record for jumping the track nine times in a single round trip. I can only imagine the effort required to push a rail car back into line.
Yes, early train travel was definitely an adventure. Certainly nothing like the relaxing comfort of today's rides. For that, I'm glad. I love learning about the past but the older I get, the happier I am to have modern comforts.
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| Museum photo, above, shows a derailed train, something that happened frequently on this particular rail line. Below is an example of the dishware displays at the museum. (Gerri Bauer photos)  |
I’ve visited the Winter Garden train museum a number of times, but always with someone that feigns their interests in trains, so I don’t get to spend the thorough time necessary, unable to take a deep dive into the layers they have. I’ll visit it alone next time.
ReplyDeleteI have a special interest in the trains of west Orange County Florida because my 1960’s childhood activities included a sprint for the 2/5th of a mile through the woods and orange groves and down to the railroad tracks of the Atlantic Coast Line. We could hear the faint sound of that train horn as it approached Hackney Prairie Road, and us siblings or friends would get wide eyed for a couple of seconds until someone yelled, “Train!” We would drop what we were doing and with an air competitive sprinting the race was on. The tracks were minimally maintained, so the speed limit was kept close to 25 MPH. The old Alco engines typically hauled mix freight, I suspect most of it was in support of the citrus industry.
The Atlantic Coast Line meandered through Ocoee, to Winter Garden, and on westward to Clermont and beyond. In the very early 60’s the tracks also broke off at Ocoee and headed south through Gotha, Windermere, Doctor Phillips and eventually Kissimmee.
For a kid, heavy locomotives and the rattle of steel wheels slamming on those rail joints stimulated an indescribable sensation that resulted in what can be best described as “being awed.”
Thank you so much for sharing your memories! How wonderful those days must have been for you and your siblings and friends.
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