The Folkston Funnel is an interesting little place in the town of Folkston, GA. It consists of two tracks, track one and track two, that carry freight trains and the Amtrak service into and out of Florida.
There is a viewing platform that provides some shade from the sun for the first half of the day. They have a radio there that plays the radio traffic to and from the trains. It takes a little while to figure out the jargon and it’s sometimes hard to understand because of the static that sometimes crops up but it helps add a little color commentary to the trains that do pass by.
There is a train museum that, while not large, has some interesting artifacts inside from times past. They also have a model train setup. And yes, they have the same audio of the train radio traffic which sometimes conflicts with the two DVDs they have playing inside as well.
And yes, we do get to see trains pass by from time to time!
Here is my motorcycle traveling buddy standing by a crossing watching the train pass by…
I counted the cars in a couple of the trains that went by and found the fewest cars I noticed was 9. Other counts were 133 and 149. The longest I counted was around 197 but I think I messed up the count on that one so I’m a little unsure of the exact number of cars. There were, however, a lot! And it seemed to take forever to pass by.
Just to remind you where this place is:
Did I mention that this town is considered the gateway to the Okefenokee Swamp??
