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ORANGE BELT RAILWAY Click (&
click again in the lower right hand corner) to see Blanton on the route
Lacoochee
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Photo contributed by Gene and Lora Blocker |
Sanford Blocker on steps of the Orange Belt RR Depot in Blanton The Orange Belt Railroad went through Blanton and later became the Atlantic Coastline Railroad. with the same tracks and route. Francis Blocker was Railroad agent for the Orange Belt and Sanford agent for the Atlantic Coastline as well as postmaster The boy was one of Mrs. Greene's children. She was buried behind the Blanton Methodist Church. Sanford is sitting in front of the Blanton Telegraph and Express Office. |
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Sanford Blocker
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Kids and the Orange Belt Railroad Carolyn Dowling Falls remembers
her grandmother Julia's stories about kids hitching a ride on the Orange
Belt train. They attended school in Chipco and lived north of
Blanton. It was a long walk back and forth. Some afternoons,
they would run the mile from the schoolhouse east to the Orange Belt track
and wait at the woodpile. There, the train would stop to pick up
fuel and a friendly engineer would give them a ride. They were
dropped off at the "water tower" just south of downtown Blanton and walked
the rest of the way north to home. |
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WORKING ON THE RAILROAD "...it was John Blocker and Billie Hill that left us, through Mrs. Bartlett's writing, a picture of working on the railroad in Florida in the last half of the 1880's. Billie wrote years later, "We batched in a pine sapling grove across from the depot... We cooked out in the open and slept in the depot, upstairs in the loft. Our beds consisted of planks laid on the sills and we put our bedding on top of that. John Blocker was a carpenter on the dock. My job was hammer tripper. Later I got a job as brakeman on the run from St. Petersburg to Oakland, a division point, and took twelve hours up one day and twelve back the next, a distance of 120 miles. John started as a brakeman. He became engineer and I was promoted to conductor from Oakland to St. Petersburg and John was the engineer that pulled me on many a trip." "In 1889, Jodie, who by this time was called Joe (Hill) except by his family, began railroading for the Orange Belt as apprentice machinist. Two years later, he became a fireman between Sanford and St. Petersburg. Firing in those days meant the steady feeding of fat pine wood, cut in four-foot lengths, into the fire box, so as to keep up a certain steam pressure. It was a hot dirty job. He had no regular run, but took what was available. At one time he fired for John Blocker." The workers who cut cord wood and placed it on racks at a convenient height to be removed to the engine's fuel bin worked steadily keeping the racks filled. There were racks near each station and by most of the flag stops. Mule and ox teams delivered the wood from the pine forest to the racks. Jessie Stanley remembered that the woodcutters rode into the station at Ehren for the week end on the flat cars that carried the cord wood farther along the line." -- "A History of
Zephyrhills" by Rosemary W. Trottman (story was probably
originally from "Some of the Blockers" and "Some of the Hills" by
Marguerite Blocker Bartlett) |
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--Taken from the Some of the Blockers Book by Marguerite Blocker Bartlett. |
John Cromwell Blocker Son of Charles H. Blocker Grandson of John Culbreath Blocker
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Sanford and Atlantic Coastline Car Decorated for Parade |
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Men at San Antonio Depot Florida Memory Project : Florida Photographic Collection Image No. PR09394
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Orange Belt Engine near San Antonio
Florida Memory Project : Florida Photographic Collection Image No. c684212 |
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1900 - 1904 Orange Belt Train Wreck near Blanton!! This wreck happened near Charlie Dowling's land north of "downtown" Blanton. Charley is wearing suspenders in the center of the top photo.
(Photos from Gene & Lora Blocker)
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