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One of the oldest railroads in the state of
Florida is the Central Florida Railroad which ran threw areas like like
Winter Park, Tavares, and of course Mount Dora. The train station was
built in 1915 and eventually in 1950 it was closed down. It is now the
current Chamber Of Commerce for Mount Dora since 1973. Today the frame
vernacular style building with its tin roof is still looked upon by many
tourist. The depot we did not investigate but we did venture onto
some of the oldest tracks and a trestle which were laid out in the
1800s.
Today tours are now given on these tracks by various railroad trains. One of those tours is given by a 1942 GE 45 Ton center cab locomotive named Herbie. One of the cars attached to Herbie was manufactured in 1947 for the Seaboard Airline Railroad. It served on trails between New York City and Florida from 1947 to about 1980. It also has seen service on the Acadian Dinner trail and the Denver Railcar Corporation. It also was used in Mexico Briefly. As far as other cars besides 6114 I do not have information on. But they appear to be from around the same time period. The car has now been called Lake Dora which is not abandoned and heavily vandalized. At one time this railroad would stop right behind the Lake Dora Inn near Palm Island Park. The reason the train would stop is it would drop passengers off for those that wanted to enjoy a vacation at the 87 room inn. The train would arrive an a port named Old Jim would take a handcart load the luggage and pull it to the hotel. Today the train sits over grown on the tracks, rusting away, vandalized and it does have a very eerie feeling. But if anything is here I theorize it would be residual in nature. After enough trips across the country a train is bound to take on its own form of energy. Whether its haunted or not to be able to bring you photos and a story on this place is a real treat. Often people take advantage of such a piece of history. At one time when Mount Dora was just a small settlement the train would blow past here as people would wave to the engineer. I am sure during that time period things were pretty spooky because most of Florida was small little woodsy underdeveloped towns. But today this abandoned railroad line that runs threw Mount Dora's historical district as houses and business line both sides of this railroad. Today the 8 to 10 cars remain desolate in this historical area awaiting their next passengers. © By Rick-AngelOfThyNight |
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