Wildwood, Florida Wye

Went through Wildwood, Florida yesterday. Looks like CSX is pulling up the wye. It does have substantial wayside signals and two well protected major road crossings so it probably is a money saving move but I would think it would be wise to retain it if they ever needed it again even if it was downgraded to crossbucks and no signals.

bostontrainguy wrote: ↑Wed Jun 10, 2020 12:04 pm Went through Wildwood, Florida yesterday. Looks like CSX is pulling up the wye. It does have substantial wayside signals and two well protected major road crossings so it probably is a money saving move but I would think it would be wise to retain it if they ever needed it again even if it was downgraded to crossbucks and no signals.

CSX Employee Timetable I have shows the Wye belongs to the Florida Midland.

mmi16 wrote:

bostontrainguy wrote: ↑Wed Jun 10, 2020 12:04 pm Went through Wildwood, Florida yesterday. Looks like CSX is pulling up the wye. It does have substantial wayside signals and two well protected major road crossings so it probably is a money saving move but I would think it would be wise to retain it if they ever needed it again even if it was downgraded to crossbucks and no signals.

CSX Employee Timetable I have shows the Wye belongs to the Florida Midland.

No where near Florida Midland. Those little blue signs on the crossbucks say CSX.

BTW - After checking the situation out I was thinking that maybe this was actually theft? It looks pretty haphazardly done. Don't know. Curious.

Also after checking this out, I watched a two engine 205 car monster freight crawl out of Wildwood headed north.

Kind of hard to tell from the photo, but looking at Google Street View and Satellite for that location, it looks like the missing item is the containment mat (or whatever it's called) that was under the tracks. I wonder if it needed to be replaced or removed for some reason.

FatNoah wrote: ↑Fri Jun 12, 2020 12:51 pm Kind of hard to tell from the photo, but looking at Google Street View and Satellite for that location, it looks like the missing item is the containment mat (or whatever it's called) that was under the tracks. I wonder if it needed to be replaced or removed for some reason.

That's an interesting observation. I would think they would install a new one if it was needed somewhere instead of doing the extra work to remove an old one, but you may be on to something.

Some observations on my part.
1- the north and south legs of the wye were rebuilt when the two crossings at US301 were rebuilt. No work was done on the tail track next to CR44a.
2- The tail was cut back in stages. In the 50"s it went to Leesburg (where Romax is.) More recently, with the Villages buying the land south of CR44a and widen it to 4 lanes, it was cut back to where the stop sign is at the end of the tail.
The right-of way still exists in the woods from the stop sign until you get to the Villages property.
3- I don't think that there ever was any containment under the tail track.
4- For many years, CSX used the north leg, next to the Wildwood Police Station, for overnight storage of the two yard switchers.
5- In this past year, CSX has downgraded the Wildwood Yard, as the Wildwood Gov't was constantly complaining that CSX was blocking the R/R crossings while making up / breaking down extra long trains.
6- I hope the tail gets rebuilt, although I haven't seen it used in a long time.
7-my last visitor to the wye was this CN SD70M-2 in 2016.

railfaned wrote: ↑Sun Jun 14, 2020 3:38 pm Some observations on my part.
1- the north and south legs of the wye were rebuilt when the two crossings at US301 were rebuilt. No work was done on the tail track next to CR44a.
2- The tail was cut back in stages. In the 50"s it went to Leesburg (where Romax is.) More recently, with the Villages buying the land south of CR44a and widen it to 4 lanes, it was cut back to where the stop sign is at the end of the tail.
The right-of way still exists in the woods from the stop sign until you get to the Villages property.
3- I don't think that there ever was any containment under the tail track.
4- For many years, CSX used the north leg, next to the Wildwood Police Station, for overnight storage of the two yard switchers.
5- In this past year, CSX has downgraded the Wildwood Yard, as the Wildwood Gov't was constantly complaining that CSX was blocking the R/R crossings while making up / breaking down extra long trains.
6- I hope the tail gets rebuilt, although I haven't seen it used in a long time.
7-my last visitor to the wye was this CN SD70M-2 in 2016.
SD70m-2 CN8819 20160601_125650 crop 2.jpg

Just a comment on your post. I did read that Wildwood yard was going to be closed and it was pretty much deserted a few months ago. However it appears CSX has changed its mind and lately things are once again pretty busy there. When I took the pics above I witnessed a train being made up and they did block the crossing at Route 462 which is just north of the yard. I am not sure how often the crossing at Ed Lynam Street just south of the yard gets blocked. It is easy enough to avoid both if you know the area otherwise it can be over 20/30 minutes of blockade making up the train and then it takes a long long time for these huge trains to clear the crossings. On that day there was a 2 engine 205 car monster freight that crawled north out of the yard and took forever to clear the crossing.

Just this past week, I had to detour because CSX was blocking Rte. 462. I had a thread here with all my pictures of Wildwood, but the pictures are all gone. I guess that when they did an update of this website, they went bye-bye.

Went by Wildwood Yard yesterday. Looks like CSX is now doing a major upgrade to the entire yard vs. thinking of closing it.

Also checked out the wye just in case this rejuvenation of the yard included a rebuilding of the wye. It is in the same condition as the photos above so the answer is no.