The Bramson Archive: What It Is and How It Came To Be Part II

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By Seth H. Bramson

In the last column we took a brief look at how, when and where “it” (the craze for trains and local historic memorabilia) all started and closed with the Bramson family’s arrival in Miami Beach in August of 1946, moving on to the wonderful and happy every Sunday morning routine which culminated with Dad taking me to see “Toodles,” the steam locomotives at the F E C Railway’s Buena Vista Yard. That went on until, if I remember correctly, sometime in 1950 when we moved to our house on Cecil Street on Biscayne Point on Miami Beach, where we lived until February, 1982.

Beginning in either late 1950 or early 1951 the routine changed a bit and the Sunday outings became less frequent. Instead I would go with Dad to his sign shop on Fifth Street on the beach and coming home I would see the paved- over trolley tracks still in place north of Lincoln Road on Washington Avenue and even then I felt something—a connection as it were to history–for even then I loved anything that ran on rails.

Eventually we developed a Saturday routine and getting up early every Saturday morning (beloved brother Bennett would not be born until July of ’52) Dad and I would drive across the 79th Street Causeway to what became our next favorite breakfast spot, the lunch counter at Walgreen’s, in the then-new 79th Street Shopping Plaza, where one item still sticks out, vivid in my mind even today. Dad would say to the waitress, “I’ll have a cup of your steamingly aromatic mocha java” and while I had no idea what the hell he was talking about I know I loved the phrase! From there, after breakfast, the day’s great event would begin.

Dad had developed a wonderful business following in the sign business as much for his integrity as for his talent. One of his loyal customers was Kosher Zion (KZ), run by Herman Pearl and Pat Deare. Their store was on Commerce Street a bit west of Washington Avenue on Miami Beach and they distributed to the entire east coast of Florida, hence Dad and I would, on Saturdays, finish breakfast and head north of U. S. One—Biscayne Boulevard—to places sometimes as far distant at West Palm Beach where he would handle the arrangements for the installation of the KZ signs. However, at that time (and it is almost like that today) there were almost no buildings on the west side of Biscayne Boulevard all the way up from approximately Northeast 136th or 137th Street to just north of Ives Dairy Road.

Because we usually finished breakfast about nine and the Florida East Coast Railway’s northbound train number two, the famous streamliner “East Coast Champion” left downtown Miami at nine (at the time the North Miami station, which opened in 1955, had not yet been built), the most exciting part of the day would occur some place along that strip of the Boulevard which paralleled the railroad for it was there, every Saturday, that I would literally quiver with excitement.

And why? Because I knew that, somewhere along Biscayne north of what is now Arch Creek Park, that stunning streamliner with its gloriously beautiful red and yellow diesel locomotives and its train of lightweight, stainless steel passenger cars would come blasting by us. To me, just a little kid, nothing could have been more exciting than seeing that train go roaring past and as I have written numerous times, that paint scheme was and remains the single most magnificent locomotive paint scheme ever created for any American railroad’s diesel engines.

Of that, and the beginnings of the collecting, more next time.

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