Eastern Railroad Discussion > Railfanning around Orlando, FL

Hi everyone,

I'll be in Orlando FL in a couple weeks while my wife attends a conference, so I'll have 3 full days to railfan around the area. I plan to have a rental car with unlimited miles, so I'm willing to drive up to 2 hours for anything nearby worth checking out.

After a quick search, I wasn't able to find much recent information on rail traffic or highlights in the area, so I'm hoping I can get some advice here. I want to check out the AutoTrain up in Sanford one of the days, and it looks like heading over to Tampa may be a good idea for one day.
Any good shortlines in the area or spots I should check out?

Thanks in advance!
    -Caleb

These Pinsley shortlines are in the general area https://www.pinsly.com/services-solutions/florida-central-midland-and-northern-railroads/  They were just bought out last week by Regional Rail.  https://www.railwayage.com/freight/short-lines-regionals/regional-rail-acquires-pinsly-railroads-fla-operations/?RAchannel=short-lines-regionals
Plant City is a nice spot to watch trains.  It has a diamond and a restored depot with a museum and a viewing platform. https://www.willafordrailroadmuseum.com/  Not sure of the traffic through there but you'll usually see enough to entertain you.  It also has a virtual railfan web cam.

You might consider a end-to-end ride on Sunrail

https://sunrail.com/

Round trip end-to-end takes about three hours.  Sunrail does not run on weekends.

Heading south, the train is shoved and you can often sit in the first row and get an engineer’s eye view of the route.
 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/04/19 10:41 by ldstephey.

The Auto-Train usually leaves Sanford between 3 and 4 pm. You may see train 97 (if it is running late), Sunrail, and a switch move by Conrad Yelvington during the week. 

Orlando is all passenger traffic in daylight. No freight activity until late night hours. 
Lakeland has more freight train activity than Plant City or Tampa. The wye for the Vitis Sub just west of downtown Lakeland is the place to be for all train traffic.
Tampa is a dead end location. Any train for Tampa passes thru Plant City. Tampa just runs locals out of the yard.

gmojim

Tampa has a streetcar line, too. And a touristy, beer friendly area in Ybor City.

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If you're willing to put up with fairly thin traffic, a drive up to Daytona Beach could net you at least a few good shots on the Florida East Coast. The problem with FEC is that it's predominantly a nighttime railroad, and that is especially true for the middle of the railroad between the Daytona area and West Palm Beach. But you might still get a couple of northbounds in the morning and a southbound in the mid-afternoon, and the Daytona Municipal Golf Course is a heavily symbolic place to photograph them. If you're really feeling ambitious, you could go all the way up to St. Augustine for the northbounds, then hit the #101 train in Daytona on the way back. But you'd want to be in St. Augustine at sunrise for maximum yield, so be prepared for a pre-dawn wake-up-and-drive to accomplish that.

The closest part of the FEC to Orlando is the Cocoa/Melbourne area, but there you'll likely only see #210 northbound in the morning and #101 southbound in the afternoon (and then, only Mon-Thur because it runs later on the other days) plus a local job out of Cocoa. If you get lucky, the #336 stone train that terminates in Cocoa or the #109 manifest freight that runs southbound would show up after sunrise, but that requires either to be late, especially during the shorter days of the year
 

Orlando has a beautiful Amtrak station. I have stepped off the train there during fresh air stops but it looks like you can get nice shots at the depot and the grade crossings nearby. Sunrail Commuter Trains use the same tracks as Amtrak and CSX in Florida. In a few years, VirginTrains Brightline will serve Orlando so you will have more passenger rail options.

Thank you everyone for the responses! I'll be sure to check out some of these locations!
   -Caleb

There is some daylight freight traffic around Orlando.  This from a friend who lives there and regularly fans the area:

"There are four daylight local jobs that work 6-7 days a week (776, 777 & 779 in Taft & 766 in Sanford) and they do run on the mainline as needed, especially the Sanford local which runs the Aloma Spur and the mainline to DeLand (as well as Satsuma as needed) and 777 which runs Taft to the RC Branch and Sexton Branch PLUS rock trains M743 north & M740 south typically run in/out of Sanford around noon.  Isolated coal movements around the S-Line up thru Kissimmee to/from the Stanton Branch are also common, but not scheduled."