File:LittleManateeRiver.jpg

English: Bradenton, Florida: Green Bridge, which carries US 41 over the Manatee River: This is also the western terminus of the Bradenton Riverwalk going underneath. (This is before improvements were made for the overall Riverwalk area.)

Warren-type simple truss bridge of the former w:Seaboard Air Line Railway. Located near the ghost town of Willow, Florida. Abandoned since the mid-1980s.

The Florida Railroad Museum

The Florida Railroad Museum operates on a six mile railroad line between Parrish and Willow. It was founded in 1981 as the Florida Gulf Coast Railroad Museum. Since 1992, it has been offering one hour and a half excursions on weekends from Parrish north to Willow and back. The organization has maintenance facilities at Willow. This railroad line that the Florida Railroad Museum uses is a very small part of a 55 mile route that was built south from Durant to Manatee County and into Sarasota with construction starting in 1895. It was first incorporated in 1902 as the United States & West Indies Railroad and Steamship Company. It became the Florida West Shore Railway on May 9, 1903. In 1909 it was acquired by the Seaboard Air Line Railroad Company. In 1967 the Seaboard Air Line (SAL) and the Atlantic Coast Line (ACL) merged to become the Seaboard Coast Line (SCL.) The Seaboard Cost Line became a part of the Family Lines System, which became the Seaboard System (SBD) which then became a part of CSX Transportation (CSXT.) The rail is 85 lb and jointed. It is class 1 track.

Willow is a ghost town located in Manatee County just north of the Little Manatee River. In 1924, a mill was built at Willow by the MoGowin-Foshee Lumber Company. James I. Robbins, Bruce Robbins and James A. Robbins bought it in 1926. The Robbinses also bought 40,000 acres of woodlands that ran south to where State Road 70 is today. The area is believed to have included a sawmill, turpentine still, a planer mill, a dry kiln, Robbins family home, general store (known as the commissary), 70 worker houses with garden plots, a house of prostitution, Snowden's filling station, a post office constructed in 1889, a railroad depot with a water tower and a church, school and juke joint located in the black section of town. At its height, as much as 50,000 board feet a day was cut. There were around 250 workers. They were paid in scrips (small round tokens) that were to be spent in the general store (the commissary.) Willow was separated into white and black sections. The black children went to the school in Willow and the white children went to school north in the town of Wimauma.

The town failed with the onset of the Great Depression as the price of lumber dropped and the business moved to Tampa in 1937. The business's steam engine is now on display at the Robbins Manufacturing Co., located in Tampa on Nebraska Avenue. A railroad single truss bridge crossing the Little Manatee River built in 1913 by the Seaboard Air Line Railroad Company remains, as do the bare foundations of some of the old buildings. The railroad bridge needs repair before it can be used again and some of the rails leading to it on the south side have been removed, so that trains can not currently travel across it. On the north side of the railroad bridge, at about Saffold Road, all of the rails have been removed from the rest of this route north to Durant. This abandonment occurred in 1986.

At Willow, there is a railroad spur that leads east off of the mainline to a Florida Power & Light Company plant. CSX Transportation provides rail service to the plant. There is a new railroad depot now at Willow built by the Florida Railroad Museum. The Museum has put a fence around the depot and its maintenance facilities at Willow and has installed security cameras. There are also security cameras installed at Parrish and in their gift shop baggage car. The area of Willow is accessible from U.S. 301, by turning east on Willow road and following it to the end.

The original railroad station in Parrish which was constructed in 1902 was consumed by a fire in the mid-1990's. Earlier, in 1988, an attempt had been made to turn the unused depot into a restaurant, but failed. Not long after the station burned down, the Florida Gulf Coast Railroad Museum (as it was named then) moved the railroad station from Bradley, Florida (also known as Bradley Junction), onto the property. That depot was then also consumed by a fire and lost to history.

The location of the Florida Railroad Museum in Parrish is 12210 83rd Street East. Their website is www.frrm.org. Its reporting mark is FGCX.