Tampa and Thonotosassa Railroad

The Tampa and Thonotosassa Railroad was a 13-mile railroad line running from Tampa, Florida northeast to Thonotosassa. The line began operation in 1893 and began at a junction with the South Florida Railroad in Tampa. The line had a station in Thonotosassa.[1] The line was bought out by the Plant System in 1901 which was then sold to the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad in 1902. In the 1920s, the Atlantic Coast Line extended it northwest to meet their line from High Springs to Lakeland (which was once the Pemberton Ferry branch of the South Florida Railroad, another Plant System railroad) near Richland. This junction would become known as Vitis Junction. This gave the Atlantic Coast Line an additional route into Tampa from northern Florida. The extension crossed the Seaboard Air Line Railroad's main line at Zephyrhills.[2] The Coast Line would designate this line as the RF Line.[3]

Tampa and Thonotosassa Railroad

Overview
Locale	Hillsborough County, Florida
Dates of operation	1893–1901
Successor	Plant System Atlantic Coast Line Railroad
Technical
Track gauge	4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge
Route map CSX Wildwood Subdivision (fmr. ACL) ARF 836.7 Vitis Junction CSX Vitis Subdivision (fmr. ACL) former Seaboard Air Line Railroad to Dade City ARF 840.7 Zephyrhills CSX Wildwood Subdivision (fmr. SAL) ARF 846.3 Glennell ARF 855.0 Thonotosassa ARF 859.6 Temple Terrace Jct. ARF 865.7 Tampa Neve Wye CSX A Line (Tampa Terminal Subdivision) Note: Not to scale. Includes extension to Vitis Jct.

The Atlantic Coast Line and Seaboard Air Line merged in 1967 becoming the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad. The Seaboard Coast Line continued to operate the line as part of their West Coast Subdivision (which also included the AR Line up to High Springs).[4] However, due to its redundancy, the line was abandoned in the early 1970s. The Seaboard Coast Line became CSX Transportation in 1986.[5]

Today, all that remains of the Tampa and Thonotosassa Railroad are two short segments at each end of the line. US 301 runs along some of the line's abandoned right of way. At the south end, the line still runs from Tampa northeast to a point just south of Temple Terrace. This track is part of CSX's Tampa Terminal Subdivision and is more specifically known as Neve Spur.[6][7] Currently, Neve Wye is notable due to its use by Amtrak to turn its Silver Star train around so it can be backed into Tampa Union Station.[8]

At the north end, the line's extension is still in service from Zephyrhills to Vitis Junction, which continues to be a busy junction for CSX. This segment is now the southernmost segment of CSX's Wildwood Subdivision. This segment is unofficially considered to be part of the CSX S Line even though it is a short detour of an abandoned segment of the original S Line.[9] The milepost numbers on the remaining segments of the line have remained consistent since the Atlantic Coast Line era but now have the prefix ARF.[10]