FL9

Tuesday morning January 2nd after we pre-registered at the Pop Century Resort, Judy and I drove to Epcot to wait for the arrival of the rest of our party from West Virginia later in the day.  Epcot is Disney’s stimulant to curiousity and imagination.  We enjoyed the “Universe of Energy” and “Honey I Shrunk the Audience” and parts of the World Showcase before the rain set in.  I did promise a railroad theme of sorts for each day of our visit to Disney World, and today’s entry has been a future vision for many years.  I found a good location with this fountain and waited to capture one of the 12 monorail trains that operate between Epcot and the Magic Kingdom.

The Disney World monorail has been in operation since 1971, and the current Mark VI version consists of six cars totaling 203-feet which hold a total of 365 passengers per train.  The track consists of 26-inch wide, pre-cast concrete beams supported by concrete columns around 50 feet apart.  Each monorail travels on rubber tires and is powered by a 600-volt DC propulsion system consisting of eight DC motors generating just under 700 horsepower, fed from leads on each side of the beam.

Next stop tomorrow is the Animal Kingdom.

Clouds and rainy weather dogged us on New Year’s Day as we drove the roughly 200 miles from Tallahassee to Ocoee, Florida near Disney World.  I had only done limited research on the local railroads as this was a family vacation, so it was a surprise as we passed through Mount Dora, Florida that we saw a passenger car parked on an overpass with a sign advertising a local train ride.  We detoured through downtown and soon discovered the ex-Atlantic Coast Line depot next to some active rails.

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On December 30th before lunch my wife and I began a 2400-mile round trip to Disney World near Orlando, Florida to visit with family at the park.  We planned to spend the first night in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and we followed heavy rain storms all the way.  We stopped for a few minutes in the afternoon at Gibsland, Lousiana to check out the Lousiana & Northwest shortline.  I had not been here since the mid-1970’s when I photographed their F-units running (material for a future blog), but not much had changed in appearance.  The shop building and its contents were locked up tight, but an old GP35 #54 sat abandoned out back.

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Even though we had enjoyed the trip immensely, now that we were on the home stretch between Dallas and Fort Worth we started to feel anxious about getting back home.  I have shot the Dallas skyline before, but never from quite this angle.

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