Passenger Trains > Brightline rolling meet in West Palm Beach

Got trackside on Feb 2nd in my hometown, mainly to lens train 109, which usually comes by anywhere between 9-11am.  Figured while I was out I'd shoot some Brightline action, even though they're about as ubiquitous as NYCTA subway cars are to NYC.  Brightline's current schedule has both the (mostly) hourly northbounds to Orlando and soutbounds to Miami arrive in West Palm Beach within minutes of each other, making meet shots, even rolling ones like the first two photos, fairly common.  Here's a rolling meet from Feb 2nd, just south of the station.  A friendly Brightline employee waves from the trailing unit of the northbound on the left, as the soutbound accelerates out of the station stop:



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/07/24 15:03 by rbenko.

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An hour later, the next soutbound accelerates out of the station, hitting the high green on the signal cantilever.  In the background a parking garage is being demolished, ultimately to be replaced by - wait for it - another parking garage!!!

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Thanks for viewing.

Rob Benkovitz
West Palm Beach, FL

Great photos, nothing like Florida sunshine on passenger trains in the crisp winter light.

Rich

Rbenko, I’ll vote #2 as IOTD— very nice meet shot! And you got a friendly wave, too ( we had a wonderful ride on Brightline back in Jan 2020 right before the pandemic —two thumbs up for the outfit!).

Great bunch...

JG

Is left-hand normal operation?

Tom

UP3806 Wrote:
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> Is left-hand normal operation?

It's CTC, so while not 'normal', it's not that unusual.

Very nice images !!

Great shots! Is the new parking garage going to be be bigger? Or was there some structural issues with the old one?

Nathan

Posted from iPhone

atsf121 Wrote:
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> Great shots! Is the new parking garage going to
> be be bigger? Or was there some structural issues
> with the old one?

This is part of "The Square", formerly known as City Place (FEC still has a CP City Place right where the Brightline meet was), which is basically an outdoor pedestrian mall.  For some reason, they recently ripped down a big square block of going concerns, including an Improv Comedy Club, a movie theater (which was just renovated in 2022), a Blues Club, and a couple of restaurants, along with this parking garage.  In its place they are building two office buildings, and (at least according to the renderings) a new parking garage in the same exact spot as the one they are tearing down.  A couple of teams with jack hammers has been at it for weeks, filling the surrounding blocks with deafening noise all day.  At the rate they are going, it will easily be another two months before they are done.

IC_2024 Wrote:
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> Rbenko, I’ll vote #2 as IOTD— very nice meet
> shot! And you got a friendly wave, too

The train with the wave is moving away from us. So who's that in the cab to wave? That's the rear of that train.

symph1 Wrote:
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> IC_2024 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Rbenko, I’ll vote #2 as IOTD— very nice meet
> > shot! And you got a friendly wave, too
>
> The train with the wave is moving away from us. So
> who's that in the cab to wave? That's the rear of
> that train.

No idea!!  My WAG would be a deadheading engineer.

Nice series and well deserved IOTD. I've spend a bit of time at this location as well, fun spot. I'm guesssing the close timing of the inbound/outbound moves has to do with the drawbridge over the New River, kinda like 2 moves usuing the same down time as in Stuart. I didn't stop at this location this trip, but we did venture over to the 15th St Fish House for dinner.

Roger Durfee
Akron, OH

EL833 Wrote:
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> Nice series and well deserved IOTD. I've spend a
> bit of time at this location as well, fun spot.
> I'm guesssing the close timing of the
> inbound/outbound moves has to do with the
> drawbridge over the New River, kinda like 2 moves
> usuing the same down time as in Stuart. I didn't
> stop at this location this trip, but we did
> venture over to the 15th St Fish House for dinner.

First, thanks for the nice compliment.

Second, I think you are confusing West Palm Beach with Ft. Lauderdale, where the New River drawbridge is located just south of the station.  Trains making the station stops there are kind of all over the place - northbounds usually are 20 or 25 past the hour, and southbounds are usually 35 or 40 past the hour.  The discrepancy is due to whether the trains are stopping in Boca Raton or not (every other hour service at Boca).  The convergence of NB/SB trains in WPB I believe have more to do with the drawbridge over the St. Lucie river in Stewart - the northbound and southbounds are scheduled to meet within a few minutes of each other in order to minimize the down time of the bridge.  Also of interest is that the St. Lucie drawbridge is the only single-track segment on the entire line between Miami and Cocoa (EDIT - oops, I originally said Orlando, but I meant Cocoa!!  The new line from Cocoa where it diverges off the FEC onwards to Orlando is mostly single track - however they built the ROW to handle two tracks if needed in the future.  Thanks Lackawanna484 for the correction)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/12/24 09:00 by rbenko.