(
Bridge Hunter;
HAER;
Satellite)
The Florida Keys Over-Sea Railroad was completed in 1912. The railroad was destroyed by the 1935 hurricane. The right of way was rebuilt as US-1 in 1938. The seven mile bridge and others were replaced in the 1980s.
There are at least 33 railroading photos in
Key West Terminal.
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Florida Keys History & Discovery Center posted
View of the Over-Sea Railroad chugging across the Seven Mile Bridge on the run back to Miami.
Harvey Patty Hillman: Great picture but that should be the north end of the Long Key Viaduct (bridge) and the train is heading to Key West.
Pat Ground: Years ago I talked with an elderly lady who had been on the train before the hurricane destroyed the railroad. She said that because the train had to go slow on the 7 Mile Bridge, it was like a cruise, no guard rails to block the view and a long time to be over water! I think she said 10 mph, so That would take almost 1 hour. Must have been exciting...
Bill Pearson: The father of someone I knew was on the last train out in 1935. They were just ahead of the hurricane. They were working for the CCC. Their next-door neighbor was on the train that didn’t get out and was turned over by the tidal wave. He survived by tying him self to a tree. I knew them both.
[This bridge survived the 1935 hurricane and still stands today.]
Doug Cowern shared
Paul Nelson: Curious what kind of speeds did they attain going over this route And di a train ever wind up in the water from a derailment?
Doug Cowern: No trains ever fell off any of the the trestles . Their top speed was either 15 to 20 mph across the trestles and normal speed on land.
The first train didn’t run until 1912. There were plenty of deaths in the hurricanes that befell construction (at least 125+ that we know of between the start of construction and the first train). The nail in the coffin was the Labor Day 1935 hurricane that killed off the route. On Upper Matecumbe Key, near Islamorada, an 11-car evacuation train encountered a powerful storm surge. All 11 cars were swept from the tracks, leaving only the locomotive and tender upright and still on the rails. Remarkably, everyone on the train survived. ....but an 18-20 foot storm surge drowned just about everyone that remained. |
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History's Mirror posted
The Florida East Coast Railway’s Key West Extension was one of the boldest infrastructure projects in American history. When No. 85 southbound, known as "The Havana Special," sped across the viaduct just a few years after its 1912 completion, it was more than just a train journey—it was a symbol of human ambition pushing through nature’s boundaries. With the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Gulf of Mexico on the other, the railroad seemed to float across the water. This line, envisioned by Henry Flagler, connected the Florida mainland to Key West and served as a vital link for passengers and freight bound for Cuba and the Caribbean. It was also a scenic marvel, drawing awe from all who crossed it. But the dream came to an end in 1935 when a catastrophic Labor Day hurricane destroyed long stretches of the track, stranding trains and washing away entire sections. The damage was too costly to repair, and by 1936, the railroad was abandoned. In a twist of fate, the old railbed was repurposed into the Overseas Highway, allowing cars to follow the path once taken by locomotives. Though the trains are gone, the route still carries travelers into the sea-swept horizon. |
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Doug Cowern commented on his post
The FEC installed this 250' swing bridge across the moser channel ( the deepest passage , located on the seven mile bridge ) . It was located a little bit south of Pigeon Key. |
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MiamiHerald, includes a couple of videos
Depending on the years. I’d have to look them up from my timetables, but I’ve seen a few at 25 and others 15 mph. In the twenties there was a boiler explosion on the Seven Mile Bridge that happened about a mile short of Pigeon Key. Was supposedly a hundred car pineapple train that was underpowered and believe the engineer purposely ran low water to build more steam to get across the bridge. He was to get water at Marathon. The boiler originally was unretrievable or said the FEC, but was found later about a quarter mile out in the ocean.
[This article says Islamorada got hit with 250 mph winds and the barometers plunged to the lowest reading, 36.35, that the US Weather Service ever recorded. "A tidal surge 50 miles wide and 18 feet high, with 10-foot waves breaking on top, scoured the islands for an hour. It was the highest tidal surge in Florida history." The Miami weather bureau kept insisting that the storm was somewhere east of Cuba and no threat even while Miami was getting pounded. They never warned the Keys about the storm.] |
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Bridges Now and Then posted
The Third Annual 7-Mile Bridge Run, Florida, 1984. (Wright Langley Collection) |
Henry Flagler made a fortune as a co-founder of Standard Oil along with Rockefeller and Andrews. Starting in 1885, he used that fortune to build hotels in Florida and a railroad to provide transportation to those hotels. He reached Daytona by 1889 by purchasing existing railroads and modernizing them. Beginning in 1892, he got a charter and extended his railroad south. He reached West Palm Beach by 1894. There he built Whitehall, a 75-room, 100,000 sq ft winter home. He had
another home in his wife's home town of Bellevue, OH. Other wealthy members of America's Gilded age also spent their winters in Palm Beach. In 1895, the railroad system was incorporated as the Florida East Coast Railway Co. and it was extended to Fort Dallas by 1896. "Flagler dredged a channel, built streets, instituted the first water and power systems, and financed the town's first newspaper, the Metropolis." The town was incorporated in 1896 as Miami. "When the United States announced in 1905 its intention to build the Panama Canal, Flagler embarked on perhaps his greatest challenge: the extension of the Florida East Coast Railway to Key West, a city of almost 20,000 inhabitants located 128 miles beyond the end of the Florida peninsula....The construction employed up to four thousand men. During the seven years of construction, five hurricanes threatened to halt the project with three causing major damage. Despite the hardships, and the engineering challenges, the Over-Sea Railroad, the final link of the Florida East Coast Railway, was completed on January 22, 1912, just weeks after Flagler’s 82nd birthday." Flagler was instrumental in turning a big swamp into an economy based on agriculture and tourism [
FlaglerMuseum-history] . (The invention of air conditioning was also another important enabler of today's Florida.)
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FlaglerMuseum-history
Aerial of FEC railroad through Pigeon Key. ©Flagler Museum Archives. [There is a photo gallery at the bottom of that web page.] |
This building in St. Augustine was built as Hotel Ponce de Leon, Flagler's first hotel.
They used a travelling derrick to place the steel girders on the piers.
Some of the bridges were closed spandrel bridges.
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John Chantry posted
Interesting photo and text
[This post has lots of informative comments. And so far the group is public.]
Jerry Schlozz shared
Dan McClary: Strange track alignment with the "S" curve crossing over to the right side of the carferry. Very different than the standard design slip approach trackage used by the Great Lakes carferries that allowed interchangeably so if one railroad needed another carferry while it's was being serviced, that railroad could lease one from another railroad and it would connect to the slip. The standardization also allowed all the Lake Michigan carferries to jointly use slips on the west side of Lake Michigan. The only exception was at the Straits of Mackinaw, where the two carferries there were three track carferries, while the others had four tracks. Four track carferry railroads included AARR, GTW, C&O, and one more.
Michael Douglas: Those cable wheels adjusted the ferry & tracks for the tides. |
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William Robinson commented on John's post
[Satellite] |
Ian Grove
posted seven photos with the comment: "I borrowed these pictures. This is the swing span on the 7 mile bridge to Key West. First it was the Overseas Railroad ...then converted into the Overseas Highway."
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