FLORIDA PLACE TO EXPLORE
Sugar Express
Hendry County · South Florida & the Keys
A 1920 steam locomotive that hauled cane to the Clewiston mill, rebuilt to run again and now pulling excursion trains around the lake.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
Locomotive 148 was built in April 1920 by the American Locomotive Company at Richmond, Virginia, for the Florida East Coast Railway, a 4-6-2 Pacific that worked passenger and freight between Jacksonville and Miami and ran the Overseas Railroad to Key West until the 1935 hurricane destroyed that line. U.S. Sugar bought her in 1952 and put her to hauling sugarcane from the fields to the mills at Clewiston, which she did until 1968, when diesels took over and she was retired. The next fifty years were rough: she passed through excursion railroads in New Jersey in the 1970s and then owners in Connecticut, Michigan and Colorado, and sat in pieces through several restorations that were never finished. U.S. Sugar bought her back in late 2016 and had her running again by April 2020, with new boiler work, a rebuilt wheelset and a conversion to burn recycled vegetable oil. Since then she has pulled the Sugar Express over the South Central Florida Express shortline, on runs named the Lake Placid Limited, the Moore Haven Meteor and the Santa Express, working out of Clewiston and neighboring towns
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