How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water? And while the water crisis is huge, we’re optimistic. On May 1, 1971, SCL turned over all its passenger operations to the newly formed Amtrak, which continued to operate the profitable Silver Meteor and Silver Star alongside a former Coast Line streamliner, the Champion, while eliminating others. By aggressive marketing and technological innovations that drew travelers to the line, such as the highly popular Silver Meteor streamliner, introduced in 1939, Seaboard managed to regain its financial footing. The “Old Bay Line,” as the Baltimore Steam Packet Company was commonly known, operated steamships between Norfolk, Virginia, and Baltimore, Maryland, carrying mail and freight as well as passengers and vehicles on the overnight run. Warfield also leased the Charlotte Harbor and Northern Railway, which ran from central Florida to Boca Grande, as well as the East and West Coast Railway between Arcadia and Manatee County. In 1924, Warfield, now president and CEO of the railroad, began building a 204-mile extension, called the Florida Western and Northern Railroad, from the Seaboard mainline in Coleman, Florida south to West Palm Beach, which for almost thirty years had been the exclusive domain of the Florida East Coast Railway.

By 1972, Seaboard Coast Line and its corporate relatives Louisville and Nashville, Georgia Railroad, Atlanta and West Point Railroad, Western Railway of Alabama and Clinchfield Railroad began advertising themselves as the Family Lines System, and applying the Family Lines logo to their rolling stock. In 1904, Seaboard subsidiary Atlanta and Birmingham Air Line Railway, purchased the previous year, completed construction and extended the Atlanta route to Birmingham, Alabama, the largest center of iron and steel production in the South, and a valuable endpoint for the Seaboard. Williams was the first president of the new corporation, which advertised its north-south route as the “Florida-West India Short Line.” James H. Dooley, veteran of several rail mergers in the South, helped organize the SAL and served as chairman of SAL’s executive council. First American falconer to hold a military contract performing falconry related bird abatement or B.A.S.H. However, like all American railroads, Seaboard saw a decline in revenues, especially in passenger traffic, from the 1950s into the 1960s, in the face of growing competition from airlines, trucking companies and the Interstate Highway System. Upon formation, the Seaboard inherited multiple repair shop sites from predecessor railroads, most of which were obsolete. On April 14, 1900, the Seaboard Air Line Railway was incorporated, comprising 19 railroads in which it owned all or most of the capital stock.

In April 1899, only two months after assuming formal control of the various railroads in the Seaboard system, the Williams syndicate purchased a majority stock interest in the FC&P for $3.5 million. In April 1927, Warfield completed a push of the Miami extension even further south to Homestead, and had his architects erect a Mediterranean Revival station there as well. Warfield had the West Palm Beach architectural firm of Harvey & Clarke, led by Gustav Maass, design a series of now historic Mediterranean Revival stations in West Palm Beach, Lake Worth, Boynton Beach, Delray Beach, Deerfield Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, and Hialeah, as well as in Naples and Fort Myers. Quick to recognize the cost savings of diesel power over steam in the postwar period, the Seaboard dieselized all of its mainline trains by 1953. In the same decade, the railroad installed CTC signaling across most of its system, generating further savings of time and money, as well as improved safety.

In addition, Warfield’s expansion down the west coast of Florida was seen as an unnecessary extravagance due to the presence of the ACL in the same area. Since electrons always flow in the same direction between positively charged particles and negatively charged particles, the current going through the speaker moves one way and then reverses and flows the other way. Thereafter, Seaboard split most major southbound trains at Wildwood, just north of Coleman, with one section going to Tampa and west coast points, and the other going to Miami. In 1942, to cut expenses, the SAL abandoned a 27-mile section of its then only 15-year-old Fort Myers-Naples extension between South Fort Myers and Naples, along with sections of two other little-used branch lines from the extension. To serve the southern section of the system, new shops were built on the west side of Jacksonville, Florida in 1907, which became the primary diesel shops after 1948. Rather than build any other heavy back shops, the Seaboard chose to equip several major roundhouse terminals to handle medium repairs in addition to the usual “running” repairs on locomotives. From January 7 though January 9, 1927, Warfield took a large faction of dignitaries on a special run of the luxurious Orange Blossom Special, beginning at Arcadia and proceeding south to Naples, then doubling back over to the east coast and proceeding south from West Palm Beach to Miami.