NASA Railroad reaches the end of its line

James Dean

Florida Today

NASA Public Affairs Officer George Diller takes one last look at Locomotive No. 1 at Kennedy Space Center. A Florida East Coast (FEC) Railway GP40-2, an FEC freight locomotive used in regular service, pulled the last two NASA Railroad locomotives from KSC last month.

CAPE CANAVERAL — The NASA Railroad has reached the end of its line.

Last month, the Florida East Coast Railway pulled NASA locomotives No. 1 and No. 3 from Kennedy Space Center on their way to new homes.

Their departure closed another chapter in the story of the space shuttle program's retirement.

One of the trains' primary responsibilities was to haul large solid rocket booster segments from the Jay Jay yard near Mims, Fla., across the river to the Launch Complex 39 area.

The segments were joined to form the twin, 149-foot boosters placed on either side of a shuttle, which last launched nearly four years ago.

Producing about 3 million pounds of thrust each, two solid rocket boosters delivered to NASA's Kennedy Space Center by rail were mounted to space shuttle Endeavour, which blasted into to the night sky from Launch Pad 39A in Cape Canaveral, Fla., in February 2010.

NASA's next rocket, the Space Launch System, will start out using even taller solid rocket boosters, combining five segments instead of four.

But with only two launches certain to use those boosters, planned for 2018 and 2022, and then at most one flight a year to follow, NASA decided there was no need to keep its own railroad active.

The NASA Railroad cost $1.3 million a year to operate and maintain by the end of the shuttle program.

The space agency had already given away Locomotive No. 2 last year, to the Gold Coast Railroad Museum in Miami.

On April 10, Nos. 1 and 3 rolled north past the Vehicle Assembly Building, crossed a drawbridge over the Indian River Lagoon and into the Jay Jay yard for the last time.

No. 1 will be used by the Natchitoches Parish Port in Natchitoches, La. No. 3 is headed to the Madison Railroad in Madison, Ind., for regular freight service and passenger excursion train service, NASA said.

The EMD SW 1500 locomotives originally were built for the Toledo, Peoria and Western Railway between 1968 and 1970. NASA acquired them in 1983 to replace aging ex-Army Alco S2 locomotives.

Although the trains have departed, NASA will continue to maintain about 17 miles of a rail network that once spanned 38 miles, branching out to KSC's two launch pads and to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. No decision has been made yet about who will deliver the early SLS booster segments.

Meanwhile, an environmental study is also looking at the impacts of a potential extension of KSC's rail line to Port Canaveral, which would increase traffic on the line.

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