ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, December 9, 1996 TAG: 9612090018
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: A Cuppa Joe
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY
Roanoke's Grand Old Lady of Steam rode the rails again Thursday morning.
Nobody fired her boiler or loaded her with coal. Nobody pierced the air with her romantic whistle. All they did was take off her brakes and stand back.
Gravity did the rest. The Class J No.611 steam locomotive, the finest ever built in this land, moved slowly down the track she occupies at the Virginia Museum of Transportation.
She traveled 8 feet.
I missed it.
John Garrett, a museum volunteer, told me to show up at 8 a.m., when he, Alan Kingery and Charlie Figura would make the lady move. They would use an industrial-size come-along, a hook and cable contraption, to pull her forward by hand.
When I arrived, her journey was already over. The tracks, laid especially for her when she returned to the museum, apparently had settled, giving her an unexpected downhill ride. The trio didn't have to do a thing. In fact, they worried that she'd roll into the rail car in front of her. Figura stopped her by sticking a 2-by-4 beneath one of her driving wheels.
At least they accomplished their goal of spinning those wheels and bathing her bearings in grease. They want her to be ready if she ever gets the chance to run again.
Only a dream could draw these guys into the cold morning air to mess with a 300-ton machine. But they are frank and open dreamers, with a reverence for technology and hearts full of memories.
Garrett, who is 72 and retired from GE, has moved the 611 five times now, once every three months. He works at the museum every Thursday, he said, admiring the locomotive, "and this is my main objective - to look after this as long as I can."
At 26, Figura is just a kid - a kid who got his first train set at age 5, and who's the museum's part-time restoration supervisor and a doctoral candidate in physics at Virginia Tech.
The 611 generated a lot of memories in her professional career, from 1950 to '59, with the Norfolk and Western Railway, whose workers built her. She created a lot more as a steam excursion puller from 1982 to 1994. Norfolk Southern's hard-hearted elimination of its excursion program is a black day in rail fans' minds, but they haven't lost hope of seeing 611 run again.
"Wouldn't we all love to think that at some point we could have our own track," says Kay Houck, the museum's executive director, "and run the 611 on that track? I'd hate to think that because it's costly, we wouldn't look into it."
Marketing surveys show that a train ride is foremost in the wishes of the museum's visitors.
For now it's just a dream. Meanwhile, there is plenty of other work at hand.
The museum has 52 pieces of rolling stock exposed to the elements and showing wear. Figura and volunteers like Garrett do what they can. The museum holds a volunteer workday on the last Saturday of every month, and everyone, willing and able or just willing, is welcome.
Once a month, Pat Sisson, the museum's development director, fills out a report and sends it to the Federal Railroad Administration office in Philadelphia. It confirms that the 611, which belongs to the city of Roanoke, is "in the custody" of the VMT, and gives information about its condition.
Undoubtedly, the documentation will come in handy if anyone ever resurrects the old lady.
The 611 will move again March 8, the day of a regional meeting of the National Railway Historical Society in Roanoke. Garrett and Figura expect a big turnout of rail fans. If the locomotive resists, spectators will be asked to help out. It's hard to imagine that any would decline.
Sages tell us we need a mission for our lives to have meaning. A goal bigger than we are can lift us out of the day-to-day annoyances and teach us how to persist. Maybe this is the role the 611 can play.
She may be parked for good, but perhaps she'll ride again.
"You've got to have faith," Figura says.
LENGTH: Medium: 77 linesby CNB