Modeling the FEC

I have decided in recent years to go with a layout of the FEC in South Florida. A fun railroad, FEC is probably, at the moment the most challenging too.

For starters, accurate rock equipment is ridiculously hard to come by. You can't find correct 'penguins' anywhere except for a skilfully done set of hoppers by a modeler from South Carolina. 

Nobody has as of yet made correct FEC containers, but I am about to try to help the suppliers with that and save them the trouble of doing field research. There are also a shortage of the 45' flatbed CYPZ trailers, but I think someone made something similar that all it takes is a kitbash. 

There is a craving for UPS containers being answered by Athearn, so one past hurdle will be resolved soon. But someone needs to step in and mass produce UMAX containers - I only have one set (correct and with placards, from Athearn) and those are quite abundant IRL.

But there are elements of the FEC that come across surprisingly easy.

For one, a properly gathered ethanol unit train is possible. All you need from the start were some TILX, UTLX, ADMX, and perhaps NATX, GATX, etc tankers. It would help to acquire the super expensive Walthers BRCX/CTCX tanks too, but I think I will live with what I have.



A job I not surprisingly fell in love with, given my strong influence from famous DC-area modeler Lance Mindheim, who tackled the Downtown Spur on CSX here, is the FEC's Downtown job. It is an underdocumented (well save for my brave friend Ricky Hudson who posted a clickbait video of them switching the water plant) local that works NS's Florida Bulk Transfer yard and about every carload customer east of Hialeah Yard. 



You would be surprised how easy its cars are to find in HO Scale. Plastics hoppers from Atlas or Walthers (WLPX, for one) for the NS facility. I'm sure Atlas and Athearn have done all the needed chemical tankers. The 60' BNSF and TTX boxcars that head to customers like Trujillo & Sons, who appear to be pulling away from CSX (to be confirmed). And last, but most certainly not least, the infamous Trinity 5660 covered hoppers (flour to NS) that BLMA recently produced. I found two at the NMRA show and had a Eureka moment saying, wait a minute, doesn't FEC handle these?! Indeed they do, and my friend Mike who previously worked for the railroad reassured me they do. (Note: FEC 432, documented, is one of the running numbers Athearn produced for their Genesis line)

If I were to model the Medley job, it would be fairly smooth sailing there too as I should already have much of the needed cars. 

Now autoracks - self explanatory. International intermodal too, believe it or not. At one point, Athearn produced a run of Dong Fang, Seaboard Marine, and Crowley containers. I have yet to buy Crowley but the others I have in possession. The Seaboard, both my friend Rudy and myself have duplicates of, on account of only one triplet of running numbers produced, and I don't mind - nobody would be able to tell unless they held a magnifying glass at the containers anyway. As for domestic intermodal, NS's constituents EMP and Hub Group have been easy to crack down on, and believe it or not, I was pleasantly surprised to find Tiger Cool being done so quick by Scaletrains. 

Winter is coming and that means time to put my free time towards the layout I was supposed to build. At first, I was aiming for a FEC intermodal speedway that was an all fictional system. Now, I am going to step back and lean towards a model of industrial Hialeah, but with a running dual mainline. I personally find FBT a fun area to model, and especially so after documenting it last summer. The area even got the attention of a friend of Lance's (Brad T.). So I will go back to the CAD and modify my plan. I am not going to lie - I'm pretty excited for it. A full intermodal terminal can wait, however, as I will focus that effort towards a future layout once I develop experience and learn from any mistakes I make now, because I can bet I will screw up time to time.




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