Seaboard had its own line to Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach, but Florida East Coast was Atlantic Coast Line’s only access to those cities. FEC also was the only railroad serving St. Augustine, Daytona Beach, Cocoa, and Melbourne, though except for St. Augustine these were not yet major resort towns in the 1950s.

Click image to download a 20.3-MB PDF of this timetable contributed by Ellery Goode.

Naturally, FEC was happy to cooperate with any line that delivered passengers to it in Jacksonville. Its line from Jacksonville to Miami was a respectable 366 miles long, more than half of ACL’s line from Richmond to Jacksonville. This timetable advertises the same Atlantic Coast Line trains from New York, Chicago, and Cincinnati that were included in the ACL timetable. It also democratically lists both ACL and Seaboard trains from Jacksonville to Tampa and St. Petersburg down the west coast of Florida.

Although there were three daily trains from New York and up to five trains a day from Chicago with passengers heading for Miami, only three of these trains had through cars to Miami. For example, passengers on the Dixie Flyer, Southland, and Everglades changed trains at Jacksonville to the East Coast Champion. Another FEC train handled cars from the Chicago streamliners (City of Miami, Dixieland, and South Wind). A third was the Havana Special. One other FEC train, the Daylight Express, apparently didn’t exchange through cars with any other trains at Jacksonville.