Member-only story
Trapped on The Florida Special
Magical and terrifying, the great dragon of a train chugged down the coast
When I was a young kid, my parents refused to fly. For several years, the family took the train from New York to Florida to vacation.
The train, which left in the early evening from Penn Station, looked like an enormous, smoking dragon to me. At the age of five, the gap between the platform and the train car seemed cavernous. Steam billowed up in giant puffs from the tracks and I was terrified of falling into the abyss.
Once inside though, “The Florida Special,” which was its real name, was a magical world that unfolded and changed shape like origami, all the while chugging to our destination. Bunk beds were tucked into the walls of our compartment. At night, they would be pulled down, made up, and with the corner of the sheet turned back. The top bunk had brown woven netting on the side to keep you from rolling out. In the morning, the beds disappeared back into the wall.
The sink bathroom also cunningly folded up and down. There was a tiny toilet that flushed. It was like an elf’s house, except everything was heavy and bolted to the walls.
Outside the compartment was a small metal box. If you put your shoes inside, they would be returned, polished, within a few hours.
This was in the days before Amtrak. In 1971, Congress passed a law consolidating the U.S.’s existing twenty-passenger railroads into one. Before that, lines competed for customers.
The Florida Special ran on the Atlantic Coast Line, and offered what was then called “Full Pullman Service.” In the early 1960s, the porters were all uniformed and Black; the passengers white. Being a white child of privilege at the time, I questioned none of this.
We waited, swaying in the aisle, for a white-jacketed waiter to show us to our table in the dining car. I remember watching my bowl of consommé swishing left and right as we chugged our way south. Somehow it never sloshed onto the tablecloth. It was mesmerizing, as was all the rocking.
