First night on the FEC

OK, I’m going to keep this short & sweet – we’ve been in the car for the past 26 hours, and it’s late. Short version – I was able to catch my first Florida East Coast freight earlier this evening in the fading sunlight.

We got here late this afternoon, and after unpacking the car I fired up the laptop to check email. I figured I might as well check out the ATCS Monitor application to see if there’s any FEC trains in the area. Well, as I fired it up, I saw that a northbound was coming through Pompano Beach a few miles to the south of us. So I told my wife, kids and mother I’d be back in about 10 minutes, grabbed the camera bag and ran out the door to try and catch them up on Boca Raton.

Well, I got there about 5 minutes ahead of the train, and set up just south of the Palmetto Park Road grade crossing. I got train 218 rolling through Boca at track speed as the sun was setting. Here’s the four shots I grabbed of the train heading past me.

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Not too bad. The clouds were rolling in, so the lighting wasn’t optimal, but I think it came out fairly well. Stay tuned for more from our stay down here in the Sunshine State.

Thanks for looking!
Tom