The Florida East Coast Railway Locomotive No. 153 is a historic Florida East Coast Railway 4-6-2 ALCO steam locomotive in Miami, Florida, USA.
The locomotive served on the Florida East Coast Railway from 1922 to 1938, and pulled a train carrying President Calvin Coolidge's to Miami in 1928. In 1935, when she was in use on the run between Miami and Key West, #153 was one of the last engines to reach Miami before the hurricane that year destroyed the bridges to the Florida Keys. For pulling the "rescue train" out of Marathon, #153 (currently at the Gold Coast Railroad Museum) was designated a National Historic Site in the 1980s. After 1938 #153 was used as an industrial switcher by the United States Sugar Corporation of Clewiston, Florida. In 1957, she was donated to the University of Miami. From March 1957 until November 1966, she operated in Miami every Sunday. In 1966 she received a major overhaul, after which she was inspected and subsequently certified by the Interstate Commerce Commission.
Due to age and damage by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, she is currently out of service On February 21, 1985, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. It is located at the Gold Coast Railroad Museum, 12400 Southwest 152nd Street, Miami, FL.
Famous quotes containing the words florida, east, coast, railway and/or locomotive:
“In Florida consider the flamingo,
Its color passion but its neck a question.”
—Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989)
“At length, having come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of those prolonged howls, as if calling on the god of loons to aid him, and immediately there came a wind from the east and rippled the surface, and filled the whole air with misty rain, and I was impressed as if it were the prayer of the loon answered, and his god was angry with me; and so I left him disappearing far away on the tumultuous surface.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I need not tell you of the inadequacy of the American shipping marine on the Pacific Coast.... For this reason it seems to me that there is no subject to which Congress can better devote its attention in the coming session than the passage of a bill which shall encourage our merchant marine in such a way as to establish American lines directly between New York and the eastern ports and South American ports, and both our Pacific Coast ports and the Orient and the Philippines.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“The American people have done much for the locomotive, and the locomotive has done much for them.”
—James A. Garfield (1831–1881)