Today's Train of Thought takes us to south-central Florida and provides us a glimpse at America's only sugarcane hauling railroad- the South Central Florida Express.
While sugar can be extracted from beets growing in more moderate climates in the Northern Plains, Midwest and Rocky Mountain regions, cane sugar is grown in relatively few places throughout the United States- Texas, Puerto Rico, Louisiana, Hawaii and Florida. A 2008 University of Minnesota study determined that the state of Florida led the United States in total sugarcane production and refining with 433,000 acres harvested and 7 mills.
This includes the mill in Clewiston, FL- reportedly the largest in the nation. Both the cane fields and refining facilities, operated by US Sugar corporation, are large enough to require two seperate railroads to bring in the cane and haul the finished product out to interchange with the CSX to the east and Florida East Coast to the east.
Besides US Sugar's 'in-house' 119-mile sugarcane hauling line- which is treated as a seperate entity by US Sugar- there's the South Central Florida Express which started up in 1990 with the purchase of nearly 90 miles of former CSX [nee Atlantic Coast Line] track west of Lake Okeechobee. The initial purchase was actually made by Lukens Steel [now ArcelorMittal] subsidiary Brandywine Valley, but was sold to US Sugar corporation in 1994. In 1998, South Central Florida Express and the Florida East Coast entered into a haulage agreement that would let the SCXF use the FEC's Lake Harbor-Ft Pierce 'K Branch'. In 1999, the line was awarded honors from Railway Age magazine as Shortline/Regional of the Year.
Besides sugar and sugar byproducts, the South Central Florida express also hauls fertilzer, farm equipment, lumber and machinery to various other customers along the line.
Here, railpictures.net contributor Christopher Blaszczyk caught South Central Florida Express' Ft. Pierce Turn trundling past the cane fields as well as a discarded pile of tied and across the State Route 835 crossing outside of Clewiston, FL. SCXF GP11 #9030 is in charge of the short 5-car train in February 2010.
The future of US Sugar in south central Florida has been up in the air in 2008 after then governor Charlie Crist announced to great fanfare a land-purchase deal from the Clewiston-based company. An estimated 180,000 acres of land used for growing sugar would be transferred to the state as part of an ongoing Everglades wetland restoration project. However, by 2010 that estimate had been sharply revised downward to less than 75,000 acres amid funding shortfalls and a worsening economy.
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