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Editor s note: Last month, as part of The Record s Where History Lives series, Peter Willott wrote about the mystery of the Florida Southwestern Railway and the two brothers, Fred and Floyd Perry, who built their very own locomotive in a St. Augustine backyard. Floyd s son, Charles Perry, saw the story and reached out to St. Augustine Historical Society s Chief Librarian Bob Nawrocki with more information. On Wednesday, Nawrocki and Willott met Charles Perry at his St. Augustine home where helped to unravel some of the mystery. Fred Perry was fascinated with railroads from an early age, Charles Perry said. As a boy growing up on Florida s west coast in the early 1900s, he would flag down trains and convince the conductors to give him a ride into town. ....
For years now, Bob Nawrocki has been trying to get to the bottom of a mystery that dates back to 1954. The story begins with two brothers, Fred and Floyd Perry, who dreamed of becoming railroad tycoons. So much so, that they spent seven years building their very own locomotive in the backyard of Fred’s small house at 44. S. Whitney St. in St. Augustine. That’s right. They built a 60,000-pound, 36-foot-long completely functional narrow-gauge steam locomotive Fred called Engine 425. They bought the plans from a company that was making steam railroad engines. They did all of their machine work; they had casting done by a local pattern place in town; they did all their own welding and painting, said Nawrocki, St. Augustine Historical Society s chief librarian. By 1963, their total cost was well over $71,000. ....
Protected in a refrigerator in the St. Augustine Historical Society s research library are 104 glass photographic negatives that tell the story of Lincolnville, the city s historic Black community, in the 1920s. The photographer, Richard Aloysius Twine, was born in the city on May 11, 1896, and was the youngest of eight children. Around 1917, Twine left St. Augustine for New York City. We have, through research, found he was living in New York City for several years from about 1917 to 23 or 24, and that would have been right around the time of the Harlem Renaissance, said Bob Nawrocki, St. Augustine Historical Society s chief librarian. So there s a possibility he may have learned to take photographs when he was up there. ....