Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 23, 1995 TAG: 9507240001
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV18 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In their youth, that sound - ghostly at night, punctual as a clock during the day - was part of their lives, the fading song of a passing era.
With the advent of diesel power about 30 years ago, steam trains reached the end of their run. Thereafter, the engines either were scrapped, immobilized as museum pieces or left to rust in the embrace of kudzu vines.
For the romantics, a few of these chugging dinosaurs were kept alive to pull excursion trains for special events such as Roanoke's annual railway festival. No more, since Norfolk Southern Corp. abruptly canceled its popular excursion program last year and put its last steam engines in mothballs.
Only one of its kind survives, and, in a variation of the famous children's story, you could call it the Little Engine That Still Can.
Locomotive 475 has a new station far from home.
The 475 was one of the engines used to pull the Huckleberry, the legendary train that shuttled between Blacksburg and Cambria. During its long, yeoman-like career, the engine worked out of both Radford and Roanoke.
The retooled 475 now chugs along the tracks of the Strasburg Rail Road, a small excursion line that runs through the green fields of Pennsylvania Dutch country.
Cliff Orange, a railroad enthusiast, author and amateur photographer who lives in Christiansburg, tipped off The Roanoke Times after he learned about the revitalized Huckleberry engine.
How the 475 got to its new station in life is a story with more twists than a mountain rail. "It's had a very strange and widely traveled career," said Ken Miller, historian of the Railway Historical Society's Roanoke chapter.
Its journey began at the start of the 20th century, when freight-laden Norfolk and Western Railway trains grew longer and heavier. The railway ordered 50 new "Class M" engines from the Baldwin Locomotive Works near Philadelphia, of which the 475 was the 26th. It cost $15,179.90.
"They were nice, powerful little engines," Miller said. The Class M had a large, powerful boiler and a tender that held nearly 14 tons of coal for fuel. For about two decades, they were the NW's workhorses, until technology advanced and the railroad developed heavier, stronger engines.
Then, from the 1920s to 1950s, the sturdy Class Ms were farmed out to lighter service off the main lines. The 475 and its fellow engines pulled lighter freight and passengers on the secondary or branch lines, such as the "Huckleberry," the "Virginia Creeper" line from Damascus to Abingdon, and the North Carolina branch from Pulaski to Galax. It also worked in the switching yards in Roanoke and Radford.
That's when these engines captured the imagination of many and became an indelible cultural presence. Renowned photographer Earl Palmer of Christiansburg snapped their picture as they hustled past rural whistle-stop stations. Lewis Ingles "Bud" Jeffries of Radford sat on a fence post at his farm, watching and listening to the 475 at work.
Jeffries - who would later write the photographic and narrative book "N&W: Giant of Steam" - was only a boy. But he was a friend of the 475's engineer, who would sound the whistle twice as the train rolled by.
"I have a lot of fond memories," Jeffries said.
All the Class Ms were retired by 1958. The 475, withdrawn from service and moved to the NW's Shaffers Crossing roundhouse, was modified to resemble an old wood-burning locomotive. In this burlesque attire, it was displayed at Roanoke's "Diamond Jubilee" celebration in 1957. On Aug. 31, 1957, it was one of an engine tandem that pulled an excursion along the Huckleberry's route to Blacksburg.
That was nearly the end of the 475's line. The obsolete engine was sold to Virginia Scrap Iron & Metal of Roanoke in the early 1960s. There it sat in disreputable dry dock until 1968, when a Pennsylvania railroad buff bought it for $5,000, and the 475 left Virginia for good.
Putting the old engine back in service was a big undertaking. The Pennsylvanian's plans fell through, as did a restoration scheme developed by the Illinois Railway Museum. In 1985, the hulking 475 was donated to a railroad historical society in Iowa. That's where it sat when it caught the attention of the Strasburg Rail Road.
A privately operated railroad museum in motion, the Strasburg operation went looking for a venerable locomotive to pull its tourist trains, and found the forlorn 475. In 1990, the museum bought it, disassembled it and shipped the old engine to its mechanical shop, located in Lancaster County, Pa.
"It was in fairly decent shape," said Linn Moedinger, the Strasburg Rail Road's chief mechanic. Still, overhauling the 475 and putting it back in operation took two years, about 15,000 work hours and nearly $650,000.
The 475's quarter-century of inaction ended when it pulled its first excursion train at Strasburg in November 1993. "So far, it's been a great little engine," Moedinger said.
Like a thoroughbred retired to stud, the 475 has an easy, ornamental life now as one of the Strasburg Rail Road's stable of four old engines. It pulls daily excursion trains along a four-mile route that passes through the meticulously kept Amish farms. From the passenger cars, the sight of farmers wearing straw hats, suspenders and chin beards, plowing fields with draft horses, enhances the sense of traveling backward through time.
On a recent weekend, as members of the National Railway Historical Society gathered at Strasburg, the 475 was the main attraction. Railroad buffs keep up with old trains like some other fans follow the careers of movie stars or athletes. At a road crossing along the rail line, four fellows scrambled to tape a sign that read "BLACKSBURG" on a small trackside building before the 475 arrived.
The idea was to recreate and photograph the 475 steaming into the old train station at Blacksburg, end of the old Huckleberry line, they explained. "It's a reunion," said Michael Shermetta, a railroad historical society member from Charlotte.
While it's true that the 475 has been reborn, there's a sense of loss and nostalgia in Strasburg and elsewhere about the other dry-docked or abandoned NW steam trains, the ones that will never again be magic carpets for the imagination.
"There's something you can't replace about seeing a steam engine come through your hometown," Moedinger said, wistfully.
Memo: NOTE: Also ran in July 27, 1995 Current.