THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 15, 1995 TAG: 9510150076
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY LENGTH: Long : 115 lines
Gary Thimsen doesn't want anyone to forget the Duke University train buff who bought his own huge steam engine 30 years ago.
For Thimsen, a retired Elizabeth City Coast Guard jet engineer, any rail fan with dedication enough to buy a full-size Iron Horse deserves commemoration.
So Thimsen is finishing a beautifully crafted scale model of the 272,000-pound Baldwin steam locomotive, built in 1911 and numbered 4501, that Paul Merriman bought for $5,000 in 1964 from the Southern Railroad.
Merriman is the Duke grad who became a DuPont engineer and who lived to see his dream of making a monument out of Old 4501 become reality.
Merriman's personal engine is on display at the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum in Chattanooga. The 84-year-old locomotive still pulls excursion trains, to the delight of rail fans who thrive on soot and steam.
Thimsen, 43, is a big kid - his home in Elizabeth City is a switchyard-of-dreams, full of operating scale models of the mighty locomotives that supplied nation-building muscle long ago.
In the ``steam room'' at Thimsen's home in Amerest Manor are a dozen locomotives, modeled in G-gauge - the largest of the model railroad track widths.
Thimsen's latest engine - still a work in progress - is Merriman's 4501. The model sits proudly on its own stretch of track. Built-in electronic tapes perfectly reproduce the all-but-forgotten moan of a real steam train whistle and the hammering rhythm of a fiery locomotive working hard.
``I build from scratch out of steel and aluminum - every connecting rod, all the valve gear around the steam cylinders, everything. . . . I love it,'' says Thimsen, patting the cab of 4501.
Older rail fans often fill up the ``steam room'' to recapture memories of a long-gone Southern freight engine like 4501 chuffing desperately up the eight-mile straight between Winfall and Okisko on the way to Elizabeth City.
``Only steam made that kind of music,'' says Thimsen.
Railroad modelers are intensely loyal to each other, and it wasn't long before Robert Soule, the director of the Chattanooga railroad museum, heard about the finely crafted model of Merriman's 4501 in Thimsen's home at Elizabeth City.
Soule called Thimsen and said he'd like to see the model.
So next month, Thimsen will take his miniature 4501 down to the Tennessee museum for inspection.
``Bob Soule indicated that it would probably end up on permanent exhibition,'' said Thimsen.
The idea of the model 4501 keeping company with big, big brother tickles Thimsen, who thinks the story of Merriman and the old locomotive reflects the ultimate dream of every rail fan.
Merriman, a Philadelphian, was smitten early with a special passion for steam locomotives.
Back in 1931, while still a Duke undergraduate, Merriman used to give up sleep to go down to the Durham Depot and watch big green and gold Southern steam engines snort and hiss and ever-so-gently glide away with a string of clickety-clacking passenger cars.
Even better for Merriman was the thundering intrusion of a freight engine like 4501 pounding and puffing to work up speed, with a long line of boxcars rattling behind.
Years later, when he was wealthy and successful, Merriman decided that the best way to honor the fast-fading Age of Steam was to buy one of the last old-time locomotives.
It was a magnificent idea that can only be understood by the happy sons and daughters of Casey Jones who still dream of ``Comin' Down Grade Makin' Ninenee Mile an Arrr . . . While The Whistle Breaks Into a S-C-R-E-E-E-A-M . . .''
Merriman finally found 4501 working for a short line called the Kentucky & Tennessee railroad, which was owned by the Southern Railroad. The old engine was still able to haul 600 tons of coal up a 3 1/2 percent grade out of the mountains.
It took some doing, but Merriman talked Southern executives into selling him 4501 for $5,000 in 1964. When the Baldwin Locomotive Works built the engine in 1911, it cost $23,182.
Finally, in another Casey Jones-like gesture, Merriman also smooth-talked the Southern into letting him deliver the engine over Southern tracks and under her own steam to the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum in Chattanooga for a complete overhaul.
Dedication is a feeble word for Merriman. As a younger man, he once took a job as a fireman on the K&T to get the feel of shoveling coal into 4501's gulping firebox while the engine was laboring over the mountains. He never forgot the whistle shrieking under a mighty plume of steam.
One of the first things Merriman did was paint his restored engine in the Southern Railroad's famed green and gold.
Never mind that Southern freight engines were all painted black. Only the lordly SR passenger locomotives were allowed to wear green, Merriman was told.
``It's my engine, and I'll paint it green if I want to,'' Merriman said.
He did. Old 4501, to the horror of Southern RR purists, remains a splendid green and gold locomotive, a big freight engine that is now hauling passengers pretty as you please.
That kind of a story was just too much for Gary Thimsen.
``I loved everything about 4501 and Paul Merriman,'' said Thimsen. ``And a couple of years ago I started scratch-building the engine for my own collection.
``I figured if I couldn't own the original, I could at least have a model of 4501,'' Thimsen said.
For rail fans, such stories have a way of ending happily.
``The museum people in Chattanooga are going to let me drive the real 4501 on one of the excursion trips,'' said Thimsen.
Already in his heart is the lonesome sound ofan old steam whistle making music down the track. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
DREW C. WILSON/The Virginian-Pilot
Gary Thimsen's scale model of the Southern Railroad's steam
locomotive No. 4501 is still a work in progress - but it's bound to
join its big brother at the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum in
Chattanooga.
by CNB