The Florida Railroad Museum, formerly the Florida Gulf Coast Railroad Museum, is a little museum in Parrish, FL- an amazingly sparse town which will probably expand by leaps and bounds in the coming years, as expansion from other gulf coast cities creeps in. Or the housing bubble will burst first and give it a little bit of a reprieve. Anyway! I was here to attend a WW2-themed train event. Effectively an excuse for a bunch of re-enactors to dress up and do a little scene. It was far from nuanced, but WW2 is one of the few wars you can actually get away with that- Nazis were pretty universally bastards and we were overall the good guys. Let's start...
Our journey starts around here. You pass through the little station/canopy building there, and get your fake Nazi-passport (your storyline is that you're in occupid France, and all boarding a train to escape the advancing Americans) stamped. I think this might have also doubled as a temperature check station? I can't remember, but it woulda fit.
Load up! The two cars visible here are FGCX (FGCX reflecting their old name) 86902, a ToFC flat that was later sold to Ringling Bros, and then bought by FRRM in the 90s, and converted to an open air car in 2002. The other, the red gondola towards the back is a former Pennsylvania Railroad gondola bought and converted in 2002.
various Nazis tooling around the little camp.