Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 9, 1994 TAG: 9410100065
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Give David Kingsley a choice between a limousine ride with a beautiful woman and a sooty, noisy jaunt behind an old steam engine, and the decision is no contest.
The New York City native is bonkers for steam trains, and dresses the part: a black jeans jacket and jeans; a 611 steam-engine hat; goggles (so coal cinders don't get in his eyes); assorted badges from railroad fairs; red and blue bandannas; a Pennsylvania railroad fair T-shirt; and work gloves.
He even has a conductor's watch in his pocket that plays an old railroad tune.
"If they were running the 611 every day on a regular basis, I'd do everything to be around it," the investment-banking file clerk admitted. "I'd sleep in the roundhouse with that thing and never go home. It's a lifelong love affair-with steam trains only."
Kingsley, 46, had lots of company in downtown Roanoke Saturday. He was one of thousands of rail fans who turned out for the sixth annual Roanoke Railway Festival, an orgy of food, crafts, music, antique cars and, above all, trains.
The three-day event continues today and is expected to draw upward of 30,000 people to the city.
Coordinated by the Roanoke Railway Festival Steering Committee and Downtown Roanoke Inc., the event also draws support from the Virginia Museum of Transportation and the National Railway Historical Society, among others.
On Saturday, rail fans were lined up across sun-drenched Norfolk Avenue when the fair opened at 10 a.m. In contrast to the cold and cloudy festival weather of last year, the day was perfect. The only clouds marring the pale blue sky billowed from a steam engine pulling passengers on special excursions.
The centerpiece of the festival is the transportation museum, a mecca for local rail fans because of its 46 pieces of rolling stock, one of the largest collections in the country.
The star of the festival is the J-611, a Roanoke-produced, bullet-shaped 5,000-horsepower steam engine that eats (coal) and drinks (water) like a glutton after a forced fast. It was built here in 1950 and was last used for regular passenger service in 1959.
The sleek engine, with a chug-a-chug that can be heard for blocks, was the workhorse for two 80-mile excursions to Walton on Saturday and today's 202-mile round trip between Roanoke and Bluefield, W.Va.
J.C. Moynihan, a retired division engineer for Norfolk and Western's Roanoke terminal and Radford Division, pronounced his morning ride to Walton and back a success.
"When I was working, I didn't get the chance to ride it like that," said the 75-year-old Roanoke resident, who worked on the railroad for 37 years. He took the trip with his wife, Dickie, their daughter Polly and her aunt, Virginia Lynch.
"This time of the year is perfect [for the ride], with the leaves turning," said Winston-Salem, N.C., resident Susan Hutchison, who traveled here with her husband, Steve, and their 5-year-old daughter, Jessica. Their interest in trains was inherited from his father.
"Now we're trying to pass it on to Jessica," Steve Hutchison said.
While the sold-out train ride was a big draw, there were plenty of other attractions. A warehouse adjacent to the museum was turned into a model-train enthusiast's fantasyland, where vendors from across the country bought, sold and traded trains, train parts and other modeling accessories.
"It was a hobby, and it's turned into a second livelihood," explained Don Loomis, standing behind a table of miniature rail cars. The Elwood City, Pa., tow-truck driver now travels the railroad fair circuit, hitting 28 festivals each year.
He also has a model railroad shop in his hometown, about 40 miles north of Pittsburgh.
Loomis explained his addiction to trains as a complete and utter fascination with raw power.
"Just to be beside one of these things is awesome. You look at a locomotive that has 6,000 horsepower-it can pull 100 cars with ease. It's amazing to me. I wish I was born about 40 years earlier so I could have been a part of it."
The fair also included demonstrations by a group that was a part of railroad history, a dozen 70- to 80-year old former track workmen who call themselves the Buckingham Lining Bar Gang.
The all-black troupe from Buckingham County came together in 1990 and travels to railroad festivals around the country, demonstrating the trade they collectively spent more than two centuries performing.
To a bluesy folk song shouted by 74-year-old Wirt Johnson, the gang used steel bars in cadence to align rail, or they swung sledgehammers at railroad spikes.
by CNB