The Times, They Are A Changing... Tampa Style
CSX Y295 works Rattlesnake Point industry Cargill Sweeteners near the rapidly gentrifying West Chase neighborhood in Tampa, FL. Freight rail service on this spur is on borrowed time as developers are moving to revamp it all. Unarguably the earlier times we think about, the simpler they were. Miami and Tampa were much smaller. Cell phones and social media did not dominate life as they do now. As per the hobbies, railroading has evolved so much that we crave the classic single-car switch and first/second generation diesel locomotives more than ever. Everything these days in a class-1 scheme of things is either bulk freight, freight to a shortline, or major customers meeting an arbitrary quota of cars per week or something -- a moderately reasonable metric to think of since time is money. As with anything of a large scale, if trends evolve, places can take as little time or as much time to catch up to that trend. Railroads with single car industrial switches have disappeared from the...