The Philadelphia Chapter of the

National Railway Historical Society

Established in 1936

There are many kinds of unit trains hauling single commodities such as coal, ore, steel, trash, etc., but very few are as popular among railfans and modelers as the Tropicana Orange Juice train. The train has been running between Florida and New Jersey for over 34 years, and has operated under SCL, RF&P, PC, Chessie, CR, and CSX using Tropicana cars in orange and/or white, with blue CSXT/FGE cars filling in as needed. The original cars, now in orange, are getting old and are being replaced by newer reefers in white sporting TPIX or CSXT reporting marks (pictures of the prototype can be found here and here).

On my "someday" list of trains to model, like ore train ZWW, the Conrail OCS and the DPU coal trains, is CSOJ, what Conrail called the orange juice train when CSX would hand it off at Park Junction in Philadelphia to complete its journey to the distribution center in Jersey City NJ. Today it is an all-CSX run and the juice trains, either K650 or R650 heading north full or K651 hauling the empties south, are usually nocturnal in the Philadelphia area. Occasionally, though, they do show up daylight and are something special to see.

Pictured here are some of the ConCor and Athearn models I have collected over the years, and Eel River also produces these models in HO scale. One of these days I may even build them!

Orange cars with orange leaf logo circa. 1995 produced by Athearn