The Orange Blossom Special chugged into Naples with great fanfare. About 600 travelers were inside its posh passenger cars, including Florida Gov. John W. Martin and Seaboard Air Line Railway President S. Davies Warfield. Hundreds had lined the tracks in anticipation of the first train to pull into the still unfinished Naples Depot. Concert bands heralded its arrival. It was Jan. 7, 1927, and the train industry was in its heyday.

The train industry first laid tracks in Florida pre-Civil War. In the 1880s, though, railways started to boom as industrialists, such as Henry Flagler and Henry Plant, expanded their train lines down the coasts of the state. By 1900, about 3,000 miles of track existed in Florida. It helped spur the trade of goods including phosphorus, produce and lumber. It brought in thousands of Northern tourists, who often stayed in luxury resorts built by Flagler and Plant.

The first train to stop in Southwest Florida came into Punta Gorda in 1886. The Atlantic Coast Line Railroad expanded down into Fort Myers in 1904. In the roaring ’20s, both the Atlantic Coast Line and Seaboard Air Line Railway ran through Naples. Eventually, train service reached Marco Island and Everglades City.

The heyday of the Orange Blossom Special and its glamorous ilk were rather short-lived, as the Great Depression stymied expansion plans, then automobiles and eventually air travel replaced rail as the primary mode of tourist transit. By the 1960s, rails were mainly reserved for freight. But the memory of the golden age lives on in such places as the Naples Depot Museum (colliermuseums.com) that took the place of the abandoned train station. Songwriter Ervin T. Rouse memorialized train travel in a song called “Orange Blossom Special” in 1938. The song has become a bluegrass standard, with Johnny Cash and other famed musicians singing the line “I’m going down to Florida/And get some sand in my shoes.”