Railfanning in Yulee, Nassau County, FL

When one thinks of rail fanning in Nassau County, FL, one usually does not think of Yulee as a hot spot, but the junction of the CSX branch line with the Gennessee and Wyoming's First Coast Railroad (FCRD) has its moments.  The CSX S-line use to the Seaboard Air Line's main line into Florida, roughly paralleling US 17 from Savannah, GA,  to Jacksonville, FL.  Since the merger of the SAL and ACL, the tracks have been taken up from Riceboro, GA to just north of Kingsland, GA (parts have become a rails-to-trails portion of the East Coast Greenway). The branch line that remains services a huge swathe of area that includes Northern Jacksonville and everything east of I 95 in Duval, Nassau, and Camden Counties. Their biggest customers are the ports of Jacksonville and Fernandina (serviced by FCRD), Talleyrand Terminal (serviced by Gennesse and Wyoming's Tallyrand Terminal Railroad, TTR), the Blount Island Commercial and Military Port; Rayonier, Rock Tenn Mills in Fernandina and Nassau County Tradeplex (serviced by FCRD); the Busch Beer Plant; Imeson Industrial Park; and Kings Bay Naval Base and various customers in Candem County (serviced by the St. Marys Railroad via FCD). The traffic is funnelled south on the S-line across the Trout River swing span bridge into urban North Jacksonville then switched on the old ACL's Jacksonville and Southwestern Line westward to the CSX main line in Grand Crossing. (Due west of the US 1 (Kings Road)  and 45th Street intersection in Northwest Jacksonville)
I am not sure of the timetable of when CSX goes to Yulee to interchange with the FCRD but it has to be before 10 AM because that is the time FCRD opens the Amelia Island Swing Truss bridge to let their train onto Amelia Island and into Fernandina Beach.  I was recently on my way to Yulee when I was stopped by one such CSX train around 9 AM.  It had stopped across SR A1A/200 grade crossing (as it often does, much to the frustration of many motorists) to allow the proper switches to be thrown inside the yard several 100 yards north of the crossing.  It finally cleared the crossing and I pulled to the left in front of the old Flood Store (one of a few buildings left of the small, yet historic Yulee district that sprang up along the junctions of Hart's Road and the Florida Railroad {1856} and later the Fernandina and Jacksonvillle RR {1882}, the latter becoming the S-Line when it was extended north to Savannah in the 1890s.)  In 1925, Seaboard built the Gross Bypass (named after a small turpentine town on the S-Line just north of the I 95 and US 17 junction north of Yulee) that funneled its passengers trains Southwestward through Callahan and onto its main line in Baldwin and away from the congestion of Jacksonville.  By the 1950s, SAL pulled up its tracks from Yulee westward to Callahan and most of the businesses moved eastward to the US 17/SR A1A intersection.
I wasnt able to wait to see the FCRD train pull out of the yard and head to Fernandina but I was able to see the CSX train while it was inside the yard. Yulee's SAL depot, now covered with abestos shingles and looking nothing like its former self, still sits vacant along the track where the two SAL lines once crossed.