According to E.P. Rentz quoted in the Palatka Daily News there were dreams of a great diagonal railroad running from Jacksonville to Tampa via Ocala. Rentz may have had in mind an associations with the Ocala Southwestern Railroad, which ran about 6 miles southwest of Ocala in the direction of Tampa; no but nothing more ever came of it. Plans to extend the railroad across the St. Johns River to Hastings and then north on the east shore to Jacksonville fell through; the company went bankrupt in May 1913.