Last week while on a trip to southern GA for family reasons I found myself with an unexpected free afternoon. I decided to hop in the car and drive down to a place I had read about as being one of the most heavily-trafficked rail areas in the country, the famed "Folkston Funnel" in Folkston Georgia. For those of you who've never heard of it, it's a CSX double main line that runs north/south through the middle of this small, rural town. There's a great viewing area with a raised covered wooden platform with chairs and ceiling fans. Overhead are a couple of speakers tuned in to CSX radio traffic. It's called the funnel because virtually all CSX traffic running in and out of the state of Florida passes through this spot. Additionally, there are reportedly about 4 Amtrak sightings a day, including the Auto Train. The following is what I saw while sitting there last Thursday afternoon. (Unfortunately, as I mentioned, this trip was a very spur-of-the-moment thing, which meant all I had with me to record any activity was my iPhone 6s. So the video quality is not the greatest. But the trains! Man, some of the longest freights I've ever seen!!) Note: I'm certainly not an expert in identifying various types of diesel engines so if you see something mislabeled, feel free to enlighten the rest of us.
Train #1 First thing I saw surprised me....a "Juice Train!" I guess I was lucky with this as my very first train because from what I understand they only run one once a day now. Also, even though it's referred to as a Juice Train, there are other types of cars mixed in. Apparently CSX doesn't devote a single train to Tropicana anymore, but instead bundles it with intermodal cars. This particular train, headed by an ES44AC, is heading north.
Train #2 7-diesel mixed freight! Headed by an AC4400. Note the GP-40 mixed in there. Train is heading south towards Florida.
Train #3. Lead by an ES4AC, another massive mixed freight heading north. I was excited to see the Kansas City Southern engine (I think it's an SD70ACe) as this was the first time I've ever seen KCS in person.
Train #4. The only unit train I saw and boy was it long! About 5 minutes of northbound intermodal action, a really awesome-looking train. Headed up by an ES40DC. Great way to finish the afternoon! I really enjoyed hanging out here even though the action was kind of sporadic. What I didn't realize at the time was I had happened by this viewing area at what is probably the slowest part of the day for train traffic. But even though there was a lot of down time I still got to see some memorable trains, so all in all it was well worth the side trip! Next time I'm lucky enough to find myself in that area with some free time, I hope to have an HD camera with me!
I noticed there was no double stacked intermodal cars on the "juice" train. I'm curious if there is height restrictions on that particular route or it's just a coincidence.