Last week RailUSA notified rail labor on the affected routes that it would be acquiring the lines from CSX, according to a Nov. 6 filing with the Surface Transportation Board.
The Florida Gulf & Atlantic Railroad will acquire 373 miles of CSX routes, including the Tallahassee Subdivision between Baldwin and Chattahoochee, Fla., the P&A Subdivision between Chattahoochee and Pensacola, Fla., and portions of the Bainbridge Subdivision between Tallahassee and Attapulgus, Ga.
No startup date was given, but people familiar with the matter say the railroad was likely to begin operations in mid-January.
Florida Gulf & Atlantic will hire 37 people in Tallahassee to run the railroad.
Rail labor was notified that the railroad will seek a superintendent, two trainmasters, nine conductors, nine engineers, one track inspector, one roadmaster, two brakemen, five maintenance-of-way crew members, one sales and marketing staff member, one controller, one accounting clerk, three bridge tenders, and one office manager.
The new railroad will roster up to 20 locomotives, mostly GP38s and GP40s, that will wear a red, white, and blue paint scheme, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The route once hosted Amtrak’s Sunset Limited, which ran between Orlando and Los Angeles. It was cut back to a New Orleans-Los Angeles routing after Hurricane Katrina damaged Gulf Coast trackage east of New Orleans in 2005.
The line, which carries a pair of through trains to perform local work, is maintained to Class 4 track standards with maximum speeds of 60 mph for freight trains. CSX has rerouted most through traffic off the Panhandle line to its parallel route via Waycross, Ga., and Montgomery, Ala.
Florida Gulf & Atlantic will be the second acquisition for RailUSA, a new company headed by Gary Marino, who founded shortline holding companies RailAmerica and Patriot Rail. RailUSA is a subsidiary of International Rail Partners. Both companies are based in Boca Raton, Fla.
RailUSA operates the Grenada Railroad, the 180-mile former Illinois Central Grenada Subdivision between Jackson, Miss., and Memphis. RailUSA acquired the operating rights on the route from Iowa Pacific Holdings in August.
The sale of the Jacksonville-Tallahassee route is CSX’s largest to date since it began a line rationalization program under former CEO E. Hunter Harrison.
CSX has been reviewing up to 8,000 miles of lines as it looks to shed low-density and redundant routes that are no longer considered core parts of the network. Management does not expect that many miles of track to ultimately go on the block.
The Florida Panhandle route was put up for sale in January, along with 126.7 miles of lines in Illinois and Indiana that became the Watco-owned Decatur & Eastern Illinois Railroad in September.
In June, CSX put 650 miles of lines up for bid. Among them:
- The Massena Line linking Syracuse, N.Y., with Montreal.
- The Baldwinsville Subdivision in the Syracuse area.
- The West Albany and Rensselaer branches in the Albany, N.Y., area.
- Cumberland Valley feeder lines east of Corbin, Ky.
- Eastern North Carolina branch lines terminating in Grangers and Plymouth, N.C.
- The Marietta Subdivision running north of Parkersburg, W.Va.
Separately, CSX sold 176 miles of lines in Alabama and Georgia to OmniTrax short lines in July. Those short lines were already leasing and operating the routes as the Alabama & Tennessee Railway and the Fulton County Railway.
