SOUTH TAMPA — Somewhere near the warehouse district of North Hyde Park, Cory Dickerson toils in a spot only hobos and train workers know much about, the St. Petersburg Times reported.
In the dark and drizzle, he labors by flashlight, uncoupling cars from a CSX train. As he unlocks the first car’s air brake line, a powerful blast cracks the night: PSSSHT!
Dickerson doesn’t blink. The train won’t stop for long. In 15 minutes it deposits wood for Logan Lumber Co. on Rome Avenue, then creaks forward again.
For more than a century, it has followed the same trek: from the Cass Street bridge near downtown to Port Tampa. But today, that industrial spine no longer hums with the promise of progress.
“They used to service all these industries off Rome,” says Dickerson, 22, a conductor and fourth-generation railroad man. “Now it’s trucks.”
So it goes for the Port Tampa spur.
The 9.7-mile route is a wisp of its former glory. Even five years ago, roaring engines tugged 50 cars at a time, five or six days a week.
Now the schedule is three days a week, mostly at night, with eight or nine cars the norm.
Kids don’t line the tracks anymore to wave. Motorists cringe when crossing arms fall.
“It’s sad,” says engineer Patricia Christofferson, 49. “It’s like watching a beautiful garden get overgrown with weeds.”
Enough companies still rely on the spur to keep it viable, CSX officials say. There are no plans to close it.
And yet, some South Tampa residents already envision another road instead of tracks. Others see bicycle trails and greenways, maybe even parkside condos or a commuter train.
The workers wonder, too. They talk as if they’re a dying breed.
“The railroad would love to get rid of this line,” says engineer John Gay.
“We all know it, we all feel it, we all see it,” says Christofferson, whose thick accent belies Long Island roots. “It’s history disappearing.”
Railroad kingpin Henry Plant built the spur in the 1880s, linking Tampa’s bustling downtown with Port Tampa’s deep water. In the process, he destined South Tampa’s scrub wilderness to development.
In Port Tampa and Hyde Park, industry mushroomed trackside. Homes followed.
Cuban tobacco chugged in. Florida phosphate rumbled out.
“It did a lot in terms of getting things rolling,” says Rodney Kite-Powell, curator of the Tampa Bay History Center.
But progress kept happening.
Phosphate companies discovered other ports. Other industries found trucks. Unused tracks lead to warehouses all over South Tampa.
Companies such as Warren Petroleum, Reilley Dairy and Johnson Bros. wine distributors no long rely on the spur.
On Rome Avenue, uprooted tracks left nothing but “a crease in the road,” Dickerson says.
Railroad workers are haunted by spirits of development past.
Where motorists see trendy apartments at Post Hyde Park, switchman Howard Ballengee, 52, remembers where the Rome & Main spur veered toward Main Street in West Tampa. Instead of the faux lighthouse of Shurgard Storage on Kennedy Boulevard, he sees Tampa Coal.
At night, backlit by the Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway, the train looks specter-like, too. Its lonely whistle confirms it.
Jane Hardin’s memories gel on the other side of the tracks.
The Port Tampa spur brushes the back yard of her Mediterranean Revival home, at Watrous Avenue and Prospect Road.
Years ago, her son and daughter held signs: “Hi trainman!”
Sometimes, train workers tossed candy for the kids, or notes for Hardin. Once, they praised her yard work. “How ya doin” they wrote. “Love the new roses.” But the tracks brought unwelcome attention, too: Teens who smashed beer bottles; transients who sat on her swing set.
Inconveniences remain. Inside her house, drinks still shake in their glasses.
“It wouldn’t be a bad thing,” Hardin says, “if they close the tracks and put in a parkway.”
Back on the train, Dickerson, Christofferson and another worker, Errol Joshua, huddle under dim lights, debating the economics of transportation.
“The only person that understands railroads is another railroader,” Christofferson says.
As the trio commiserates, the train jogs past Courier City, Hyde Park, Palma Ceia. Hundreds of homes line the corridor.
In daylight, it offers an alien beauty.
Jungle-like vegetation looms. Graffiti screams. The homeless leave signs of camp. And yet, wildflowers splash next to rusty tracks and creosote-soaked timbers.
From 20 feet up, railroad workers spy other images.
“You get to look in people windows,” Christofferson confides.
Anything good? “Oh yeah,” the three answer in unison. They don’t elaborate. “Some things you don’t want to see,” Christofferson jokes.
Keeping the trains on time isn’t as easy it looks, she says. It takes patience. The train is “like a female . . . temperamental,” she says. “She’s always challenging me. I’m always challenging her. It’s like two females in a cat fight.”
Christofferson says as long as the train is running, she’ll keep winning.
For now, it still hauls. Bricks, chlorine, paper, sheet rock.
On this night, workers pick up an empty tank of corn syrup from Cargill, on Tyson Avenue.
At Mississippi Avenue, a guy waits for the train by the side of his SUV. He makes a tugging motion with his arms, hoping to get a whistle blast.
The workers comply. The SUV guy cheers. The workers smile.
They’re not forgotten yet.
Talk turns to dinner. Maybe at Port Tampa, they decide.
As the train approaches Bay to Bay Boulevard, bells clang and red lights flash. The whistle blows as steel wheels click past waiting cars.
It’s over in seconds.
As the railroad arms rise, motorists resume their hurry.
No one waves goodbye.