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)
“In order to get to East Russet you take the Vermont Central as far as Twitchell’s Falls and change there for Torpid River Junction, where a spur line takes you right into Gormley. At Gormley you are met by a buckboard which takes you back to Torpid River Junction again.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“What do we want with this vast and worthless area, of this region of savages and wild beasts, of deserts, of shifting sands and whirlwinds, of dust, of cactus and prairie dogs; to what use could we ever hope to put these great deserts, or those endless mountain ranges, impenetrable and covered to their very base with eternal snow? What can we ever hope to do with the western coast, a coast of 3,000 miles, rockbound, cheerless, uninviting and not a harbor in it?”
—For the State of Kansas, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“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)
“Hereditary property sophisticates the mind, and the unfortunate victims to it ... swathed from their birth, seldom exert the locomotive faculty of body or mind; and, thus viewing every thing through one medium, and that a false one, they are unable to discern in what true merit and happiness consist.”
—Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)