Florida East Coast Railway HO Scale Models

The Florida East Coast Railway traces its origins to the ambitions of Henry Morrison Flagler, a principal partner in Standard Oil alongside John D. Rockefeller. Flagler first traveled to Florida in 1878 accompanying his ailing wife, and after subsequent visits came to recognize the state's enormous potential as a destination for northern tourists and investors. In 1885 he began purchasing and consolidating small, poorly constructed narrow-gauge railways along Florida's Atlantic coast, converting them to standard gauge and rebuilding them to his own demanding standards. He incorporated the Jacksonville, St. Augustine and Indian River Railway in 1892 as a holding company for his expanding network, and the Florida East Coast Railway was formally organized in 1899. Flagler understood that hotels and railways were inseparable enterprises, and he built grand resort properties in St. Augustine, Ormond Beach, Palm Beach, and Miami to accompany the tracks pushing steadily southward down the peninsula. The most audacious chapter in the FEC's history was Flagler's decision to extend the railway across open water to Key West, then the largest city in Florida and an important port. Construction of the Overseas Extension required building across a chain of islands and open stretches of the Florida Straits, a feat of engineering that drew international attention. The line was completed in 1912, the same year Flagler died, and it remained operational until the catastrophic Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 destroyed substantial portions of the causeway and bridges south of the mainland. The State of Florida subsequently acquired the damaged right-of-way and rebuilt it as a roadway for automobile traffic, a corridor that became the Overseas Highway. Though the Key West extension was lost, the FEC retained its main line running roughly 351 miles along Florida's Atlantic coast from Jacksonville to Miami. During the Great Depression the railway fell into financial difficulty, and control eventually passed to interests associated with the du Pont family, with Ed Ball assuming a dominant leadership role. Under Ball's direction in the 1960s the FEC took the extraordinary step of refusing to settle with its labor unions on terms it considered unaffordable, triggering one of the longest and most violent labor disputes in American railroad history. The conflict, which lasted from 1963 until 1977, involved bombings, shootings, and extensive vandalism directed at the railroad's physical plant. Despite the turmoil, Ball invested heavily in modernizing the property, and the FEC became the first American railroad to operate with two-man train crews, to eliminate the caboose from its freight trains, and to discontinue all passenger service, which it did by 1968. The courts ultimately upheld the railroad's right to employ replacement workers, and the company emerged from the conflict as a leaner, more efficiently operated property. Ownership of the FEC passed through several corporate hands in subsequent decades, moving from the St. Joe Company to FOXX Holdings around 1983 and then to Florida East Coast Industries between 2000 and 2016, before ultimately being acquired by Grupo México, the Mexican mining and transportation conglomerate. Today the railroad operates as a Class II carrier, with its principal freight revenues derived from intermodal traffic and rock trains serving the construction industry of South Florida. The railway has also taken on renewed significance in passenger transportation through its relationship with Brightline, a privately operated intercity passenger service that uses FEC trackage between Cocoa and Miami, representing the first new privately funded intercity passenger railroad built in the United States in decades.