Hello Again,
I'm Sandy Duffy, with the Port Huron & Detroit Railroad Historical Society. As most of you railfans know, from my previous post, we are the lucky recipients of Castleblayney, the former PV of the PH&DRR. We are trying to move the car north from the Gold Coast Rail Museum in Miami back to Port Huron, Michigan.
It would have been an easy move, in fact a straight shot using CSX. But thanks to another PV owner who thought he could get by using substandard lubricants on his newly-acquired car, the bearings burned up, forcing the train to put his car out taking time which blocked the main line of CSX. This happened not so very long ago. It initiated a rule excluding non-rotating end cap bearings on cars being transported in freight service. The bottom line is CSX refuses to move our car. Castleblayney has these bearings, which have passed inspection.
We are trying Plan B which is to make an interchange with FEC (RailAmerica), NS, CN and finally a switching move in Port Huron. CSX Special Movements coordinator claims there is an interchange; a sales and marketing rep from FEC says he doesn't think so. This coming week, I'll be trying to find out either way.
The Society is making every effort to save this car. As most of you know, it was Chesapeake and Ohio Car Number One, Richmond, the road's first heavyweight Pullman business car.
If there is no interchange, Plan C will be more expensive. It entails lifting it off its trucks and placing it on two flatcars. This may be in the $12-$15 thousand range, double what an in freight move would be.
If anyone knows about where this interchange between CSX and FEC is, let me know so I can urge CSX and FEC to help bring this project further.
Sandy Duffy

CSXT and FEC have far fewer interchanges than they had several decades ago. You do not say where the car is, but CSXT and FEC no longer intersect North of Palm Beach and I'm not sure they still connect there. FEC uses CSXT trackage rights to reach its branch to serve US Sugar at Clewiston, so the interchange at Okeechobee only runs South.

Sandy,

If I remember correctly from a couple of years ago when I was trying to move out a locomotive from Gold Coast, it is CSX that serves the museum. If that is still the case, then CSX has to pull the car out of the museum to interchange to FEC. For your sake I hope I am wrong.

Thanks for these comments. Any help from the railfan community is greatly appreciated. The bottom line is saving this unique Pullman. If we can't get this north, the carbody will be scrapped.
GoldCoast Museum is on the southern outskirts of Miami and not Palm Beach. Sorry if that was inferred. In communication with CSX Special Movements coordinator, it was indicated from that department that they did have an interchange with FEC in Miami. Where we haven't located yet.
Back when I was an interchange clerk with the PH&D, we could pretty well determine the most efficient route to move a car. It was up to the railroad to come up with that routing to create a waybill and then the freight charges. That was 30 years ago. I find it a bit disconcerting that we (the Society) has to make such an effort to come up with a routing! Whatever happened to customer service??
Sandy Duffy

I misread your initial post. I thought your car had gotten into trouble because a previous owner had used the wrong lubricant and was already enroute. Is it possible to replace the bearings with a conforming type before moving the car? Expensive, yes, but so is paying to move it on flatcars.

The railroads no longer have sales departments that call on any but their largest customers. I had an inquiry as to what railroad served an unoccupied building in a city served by CSXT and a short line. The only CSXT employee within 50 miles of the location was a signal maintainer. Since he was off that day, the owner of the building lost a potential buyer and CSXT lost a potential customer. Have you looked at moving it by vessel? After all, both Miami and Port Huron can be reached by ocean going ships.

Let me get this straight: These idiots can't figure out where the interchanges are?

Sigh.

From Gold Coast, it goes up Homestead Sub to CSX's Hialeah Yard, not to be confused with the closer FEC Hialeah Yard, probably on the local to/from Homestead. From there, it will probably backtrack through a connection with the FEC at the south end of CSX's yard, where the FEC main crosses at a right angle, then end up going west through Alligator Junction (no, really) where the main turns south to FEC Hialeah Yard. Total distance: About 25 miles.

Now, it appears there MAY be an interchange track at Oleander, where the CSX line crosses the FEC track going south from FEC Hialeah to Kendall. Alternately. both FEC and CSX appear to have a short line through Tropical Park, several miles to the south, although this certainly doesn't appear to be an official interchange, but could be useful if the mission is just to get the car the heck off CSX rails A.S.A.P. (Look around SW 72nd Ave and SW 48th St.)

Sources: Steam-Powered Video's Comprehensive RR Atlas of North America, Southeast Edition, Page 23 FL-19; DeLorme Street Atlas USA 2008, and my own experience down there. (Titanic Brewing in Coral Gables while you twiddle your thumbs.)