The storied Orange Blossom Cannonball
Part history, part movie prop, train ‘delighted’ riders
— a historic steam-powered train that’s appeared in Hollywood blockbusters — is set to make its final run.
TAVARES — Noel Miner, 65, beamed as she watched children, parents and grandparents clamber off the historic old-timey train, pleased by the experience.
“The people who came off it, they were so delighted,” said Miner, who was an actor aboard the Orange Blossom Cannonball Santa’s Christmas Express highlighted by a stroll through the train cars by Santa and Mrs. Claus. “It was everything they were looking for.”
But the Tavares-based 110-year-old steam-powered tourist train is ending its run Sunday after more than five years of operation. Florida Central Railroad, which owns the tracks, chose not to renew the lease to the Tavares, Eustis & Gulf Railroad, owner of the Cannonball.
The train’s demise has been met with dismay by fans who got a kick out of giving their kids and grandkids the experience of riding in an oldfashioned train between Tavares and Mount Dora that frequently had Hollywood calling.
The Cannonball has strutted its stuff in movies featuring big-name actors including George Clooney in “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” and Russell Crowe and Christian Bale in “3:10 to Yuma.” In all, it’s been featured in 20 movies over the decades, earning the nickname, “The Movie Train.”
“We are choosing a different business model for that line — we’re going stronger into freight and into storage,” said Pete Petree, vice president of operations at Pinsley Railroad, parent company of Florida Central Railroad. The spur of tracks that breaks off from Tavares and ends in Sorrento will be used to store
freight-train cars, he said.
The decision means the end of the line for the Cannonball and its backup, the Lake Dora Limited, a 1941 diesel engine. The Cannonball is the only steam engine operating in Florida outside of an amusement park, evaporating 1,000 gallons of water through a wood fire on weekend trips.
Tavares has a long history with tourist trains, including the Mount Dora Meteor and Dora Doodlebug as well as visits by Thomas the Tank Engine, a kid magnet. The city of 15,400 northwest of Orlando even built a $540,000, vintage-looking train station that serves as headquarters for a steam train and the Tavares Chamber of Commerce.
In 2010, the Meteor was stopped in its tracks temporarily when it was discovered 1,000 railroad ties would have to be replaced along the route.
The state of disrepair was part of a reckoning of the region’s railways.
“It was 1920s track and the company was considering abandonment, which would have meant that our railroad would have completely gone away,” said T.J. Fish, executive director of the Lake-Sumter Metropolitan Planning Organization.
In 2014, a project to upgrade tracks from Umatilla to Orlando to make them capable of handling faster and heavier freight trains was completed. The project included improvements on the Tavares-to-Mount Dora spur, which opened the door to Cannonball trips between the two cities.
“That was not done with the vision of the tourism train,” Fish said of the rail improvement project. “However, the first beneficiary of the upgrade was the tourism train.”
The train attracted spinoff visitors from the theme parks. For example, visitors from England would often ride the Cannonball because they were “looking for the more real America,” said Eric Liscom, Tavares, Eustis & Gulf Railroad operations manager.
But some residents tired of the Cannonball’s teakettle noises as it chugged into the Mount Dora or Tavares stations.
Fish agreed that the idyllic antique train sometimes clashed with its modern surroundings.
Now, the Cannonball, which came to Tavares from Arkansas in October 2011, has an uncertain future.
Tavares City Administrator John Drury said he hopes to finds ways to keep a tourism train as a regional attraction. The Cannonball was an important part of transportation tourism in what officials have dubbed “America’s Seaplane City.”
“It will be missed,” Drury said.