Phantoms & Meteors

Trains play a significant part in a number of Fleming's books and the novels Live & Let Die and Goldfinger both feature railroad trips between New York and Florida.

The Seaboard Air Line Railroad introduced the Silver Meteor, a diesel powered service between New York and Florida, in 1939.  The train used to split at Wildwood with the front half of the train heading southwest towards the Gulf Coast and the rear to Miami.

In Live and Let Die, Bond and Solitaire take The Silver Phantom from Pennsylvania station through Newark, Trenton, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington.  The Silver Phantom was a fictional name conjured up by Fleming, the trains operated by the Seaboard Air Line Railroad at the time were named the Silver Meteor and Silver Star.

Fortuitously they slip off the train at Jacksonville and take the Silver Meteor (this time a real train name), to Tampa and avoid an attack on the Phantom.

"'There's a long stretch of straight track between Waldo and Ocala,' continued Leiter, 'running through forest and swamp land. State highway right alongside the track. About twenty minutes outside Waldo, Wham! goes a dynamite emergency signal under the leading Diesel. Driver comes down to forty. Wham! And another Wham! Three in line! Emergency! Halt at once!" 

Three of Mr Big's agents walk down the outside of the stopped train:

"Twenty yards and they stop outside Car 245. Men with the rippers give a double squirt at your window. Open it up for the pineapple. Centre man tosses in the pineapple and all three run back to the car. Two seconds fuse. As they reach the car, BOOM! Fricassee of Compartment H. Fricassee, presumably, of Mr. and Mrs. Bryce."

A timetable from the early 1950s says it is 42 minutes from Waldo to Ocala on the Silver Meteor.  As the attack happened around 20 minutes after leaving Waldo we can place it just south of the town of Hawthorne where there is a long straight stretch of the line next to the Sid Martin Highway.

Bond & Solitaire leave the train at Clearwater station which is the last station before St Petersburg before heading to the (presumably fictional) Everglades.  On the way they get spotted by Poxy, an associate of the Robber, at the junction of Park Street and Central Avenue.

In Goldfinger, Bond also takes the Silver Meteor from Miami to New York accompanied by his "hostage" Jill Masterton. 

No travel details are given of the journey, presumably as Bond had other things to occupy his mind:

"It had been a wonderful trip up in the train. They had eaten the sandwiches and drunk the champagne and then, to the rhythm of the giant diesels pounding out the miles, they had made long, slow love in the narrow berth."

See my Google map to track 007's train journeys on the Seaboard Air Line Railroad, plus over 850 other locations from Ian Fleming's Bond novels.