Last week RailUSA notified rail labor on the affected routes that it would be acquiring the lines from CSX, according to a Nov. 6 filing with the Surface Transportation Board.
The Florida Gulf & Atlantic Railroad will acquire 373 miles of CSX routes, including the Tallahassee Subdivision between Baldwin and Chattahoochee, Fla., the P&A Subdivision between Chattahoochee and Pensacola, Fla., and portions of the Bainbridge Subdivision between Tallahassee and Attapulgus, Ga.
No startup date was given, but people familiar with the matter say the railroad was likely to begin operations in mid-January.
Florida Gulf & Atlantic will hire 37 people in Tallahassee to run the railroad.
Rail labor was notified that the railroad will seek a superintendent, two trainmasters, nine conductors, nine engineers, one track inspector, one roadmaster, two brakemen, five maintenance-of-way crew members, one sales and marketing staff member, one controller, one accounting clerk, three bridge tenders, and one office manager.
The new railroad will roster up to 20 locomotives, mostly GP38s and GP40s, that will wear a red, white, and blue paint scheme, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The route once hosted Amtrak’s Sunset Limited, which ran between Orlando and Los Angeles. It was cut back to a New Orleans-Los Angeles routing after Hurricane Katrina damaged Gulf Coast trackage east of New Orleans in 2005.
The line, which carries a pair of through trains to perform local work, is maintained to Class 4 track standards with maximum speeds of 60 mph for freight trains. CSX has rerouted most through traffic off the Panhandle line to its parallel route via Waycross, Ga., and Montgomery, Ala.
Florida Gulf & Atlantic will be the second acquisition for RailUSA, a new company headed by Gary Marino, who founded shortline holding companies RailAmerica and Patriot Rail. RailUSA is a subsidiary of International Rail Partners. Both companies are based in Boca Raton, Fla.
RailUSA operates the Grenada Railroad, the 180-mile former Illinois Central Grenada Subdivision between Jackson, Miss., and Memphis. RailUSA acquired the operating rights on the route from Iowa Pacific Holdings in August.
The sale of the Jacksonville-Tallahassee route is CSX’s largest to date since it began a line rationalization program under former CEO E. Hunter Harrison.
CSX has been reviewing up to 8,000 miles of lines as it looks to shed low-density and redundant routes that are no longer considered core parts of the network. Management does not expect that many miles of track to ultimately go on the block.
The Florida Panhandle route was put up for sale in January, along with 126.7 miles of lines in Illinois and Indiana that became the Watco-owned Decatur & Eastern Illinois Railroad in September.
In June, CSX put 650 miles of lines up for bid. Among them:
- The Massena Line linking Syracuse, N.Y., with Montreal.
- The Baldwinsville Subdivision in the Syracuse area.
- The West Albany and Rensselaer branches in the Albany, N.Y., area.
- Cumberland Valley feeder lines east of Corbin, Ky.
- Eastern North Carolina branch lines terminating in Grangers and Plymouth, N.C.
- The Marietta Subdivision running north of Parkersburg, W.Va.
Separately, CSX sold 176 miles of lines in Alabama and Georgia to OmniTrax short lines in July. Those short lines were already leasing and operating the routes as the Alabama & Tennessee Railway and the Fulton County Railway.
you cant run a railroad if you keep selling the tracks and the properties , and still call yourself a class 1 railroad ,keep this up and csx will fade into just another short line railroad , unless that’s what the higher ups want .
This move comes as no surprise to me. CSX has and will continue to sell off track until it too disappears from the scene. Now that British billionaire Sir Richard Branson is investing in Brightline which is due for a name change soon to Virgin Trains USA look for exciting new things to occure on the American rail horizon.
If only the same leadership could be found in the nation’s capitol today what a wonderful world this would be!
I am surprised that Genesee and Wyoming (GWI) did get this property. The Florida Gulf and Atlantic looks like a good fit for GWI. 0
The railroads have sold their collective souls to Wall Street. I wonder if they really want to be a transportation company and/or just a cash cow stripping assets until there is nothing left but a bare shelf? Trucks continue to do circles around the railroad industry and looks like that is going to continue for a long time
Maybe the new railroad will paint some GP40’s in the Seaboard Air Line “Jolly Green Giant” scheme. Those would be great “heritage” units!
Strange that little or nothing has been said about CSX taking about 50 or 60 miles of its East St. Louis, IL – Cincinnati, OH route out of service a couple of years ago and effectively ending direct service between these two points. Maybe RailUSA would like to acquire this route as well.
Can not believe that CSX is this stupid. As has been shown the last few years, when a Hurricane hits the East Coast, CSX and NS lose all traffic over the lines between Savannah and DC. The panhandle line was a safety valve and had Amtrak been operating on it, trains would not have had to end at Jacksonville FL for the Silver Star and terminated completely the Silver Meteor. Loss of the line between DC and Jax also shutdown Amtrak’s Auto-train. Which is an Amtrak money maker.
Carl Welch, interesting observation about CSX and C & NW. Question on your thought, how are going to get out of business once they have become a corridor railroad connecting the major metro areas east of Mississippi River and not much else? They setting up to be a takeover target for the highest bidder, UP or BNSF?
Timothy Ekren, how can CSX get out of business. I spent quite a few years in C & NW territory years ago. In their last gasp, they built a line into the Powder River Basin. UP, I think, took over that segment and others that had value. Later, UP sold off the parts they didn’t want, including the C & NW segments in SD. I don’t know management at any railroad, but it seems likely that NS would play the UP role in the east. What do you think?
The closest parallel, Ben, would be the Cardinal operating over the Buckingham Branch Railroad. I say good riddance, [CSX]…. as their dispatching prowess will not be missed.
Don’t rush to put words in Amtrak’s mouth. Amtrak will run the system they are told to run. The most likely candidate I see is for a consortium of the involved states to begin corridor service under contract to Amtrak or another entity.
I’ve been told the line from Montgomery thru Dothan and over to Waycross has been downgraded to 25mph by CSX. My understanding is they did this to keep from installing PTC.
If this is the case and I’m pretty sure it is, the only other route would be Mobile to Montgomery over to LaGrange and the south thru Cordell and finally Waycross and Jacksonville.
As far as the condition of the PD sub, Im not sure if it’s been has PTC but it has been pretty well maintained by CSX and I’ve recently seen a train running along side I-10 and I paced it at 49mph.
In regards to NS interchange, the posted map shows the NS Line from Valdosta, GA to Lake City, FL. Is this line still in service and does it connect to CSX in Lake City?
Is it possible or likely that CSX might continue to operate its own trains over the panhandle route even after it is acquired by Rail USA, especially when the Bow Line via Montgomery gets congested? I could visualize something similar to BNSF running over Montana Rail Link.
I do worry about poor connections for Rail USA at both ends, given the lack of industry and volume shippers in the panhandle region. They really need to access FEC and NS at JAX, and trackage rights to Mobile to interchange with CN and NS.
The map above left off the segment of CSX’s “Bow Line” between Valdosta and Waycross, GA.
I wish RailUSA luck, I really do (I can see the trains from my window at work, and wish they would run in the daytime), but they are going to have to build locally originating traffic almost from scratch, if Tallahassee is any indication. There certainly isn’t much here in Tallahassee.
Seems like CSX got rid of a route that ran in a straight line between two major areas and are rerouting traffic to slower routes but maybe that is just a misguided observation. Also if CSX cuts their traffic enough and goes out of the railroad business does their operating ratio drop to zero;) I noticed the other day that BNSF managed to raise revenue and profit despite slightly increasing their operating ratio.
So any eastward CSX traffic for Florida must now be routed via La Grange, Georgia?! As far as passenger service the last thing Amtrak wants to do is run more passenger trains. The best bet along this segment is Florida’s Brightline.
If I remember correctly, the Fed government subsidy for each coach passenger when Amtrak tried running the Sunset from CA to FL was something like $940. It was by far the biggest money loser Amtrak had back then. I doubt Amtrak would even think of restoring service east of New Orleans no mater who owned the track.
I can’t believe CSX did such a foolish thing. Owning train track is a prime time real estate and the future will only bring more business for those tracks. While they got influenced to reroute through Montgomery they will get backed up in Montgomery there is only so much traffic that line can take, and they will loose a lot of time and nerve waiting for them Montgomery boys who influenced this foolish decision.
I think it is hilarious so many people are concerned what this means for the Sunset Limited. The problem with that train is the AMTRAK doesn’t want to run it, so it makes no difference who has this line. It probably has a better chance with the FGAR than CSX, because shortlines typically want to attract any revenue they can.
Without trackage or haulage rights over CSX between Baldwin and Jacksonville. This line will decline drastically. They need to interchange traffic with Norfolk Southern and especially Florida East Coast, not just CSX.
On the other end in Pensacola they will interchange with CSX & Alabama & Gulf Coast which is OK. Too bad they can’t get trackage/haulage rights to Mobile. They could have interchanged with NS and CN.
If the could have worked out these two additional items it would have been a huge plus. It. Would have allowed some form of competition to CSX. Picture the possibilities of thru East coast traffic to western carriers via a CN from Mobile to Hattiesburg, MS then to New Orleans via NS. Maybe even some container or stack trains.
Maybe CSX thought about this and was afraid that the new company would be eyed by competition. NS or FEC. for a couple.
Which line is this?
, along with 126.7 miles of lines in Illinois and Indiana that became the Watco-owned Decatur & Eastern Illinois Railroad in September.
I see some people are asking about PTC, this line is half CTC, half dark territory. From what I’ve been told they plan to return passenger service in the next 5 years, I have no idea if that is Amtrak or someone else. Someone else also asked why they retained Attapulgus to Bainbridge, the simple reasoning behind that is because they are using that section for car storage right now and haven’t run a train over it since 2010. They will continue to switch Bainbridge via the Bow Line. The damages to this line from the hurricane were cleaned up within about a week’s time, it got hit hard, but it is all fully operational again. This will be a great new start for a territory that CSX has repeatedly hurt.
The weather channel was showing the cars turned over in the Bay Line yard in Panama City, but they were referencing the average weight of freight cars that they found on the CSX web site. I don’t know if their reporter actually knew which railroad they were on at the time.
Did this line suffer any damage during the recent hurricane that swept over the panhandle? The weather channel showed video of a string of boxcars blown over and said it was the CSX