Virginia Museum Would Return Norfolk & Western 4-8-4 to Service
ON FEBRUARY 22, 2013, the Virginia Mu- seum of Transportation in Roanoke made an announcement many steam fans had dreamed of, even before Norfolk Southern established its 21st Century Steam program in 2011. The museum has assembled the Fire Up 611! com- mittee, which will evaluate Norfolk & Western Class J 4-8-4 No. 611 to determine whether it’s feasible to return it to excursion service and estimate how much a restoration will cost. Built in May 1950 at the railroad’s Roanoke Shops along with Nos. 612 and 613, No. 611 is considered to be one of the finest steam loco- motives ever built. While the N&W J class sported somewhat anachronistic spoked 70- inch drivers, the rest of the machine was an up-to-date example of the steam designer’s finest art. No. 611 has a cast steel engine bed, a boiler designed to operate at 300 p.s.i. pres- sure, and lightweight, roller-bearing rods, roller bearings on all axles, and one of the sim- plest, yet most elegant, streamlined designs ever applied to a North American steam loco- motive. In 1944 N&W’s parent, the Pennsylva- nia Railroad, tested No. 610 on the straght, flat Fort Wayne Division out of Crestline, Ohio, where it reportedly moved a 15-car pas- senger train at 110 m.p.h. The J’s were capa- ble of such high speeds despite their relatively small drivers because of careful counterbal- ancing, lightweight rods and valve gear, and tight tolerances in their running gear. The J’s were used on N&W’s primary pas-
senger trains from Columbus, Ohio, to Nor- folk, Va., and on trains jointly operated with the Southern Railway from Lynchburg through
Bristol, Va. As dieselization ap-
proached in the late 1950s they saw occasional 22 MARCH 2013 •
RAILFAN.COM
use in freight service, where they could move 4900-ton trains at 40 m.p.h.
No. 611 was involved in a derailment at Cedar,
W.Va., on January 23, 1956, when it left the rails on a curve and rolled over onto the bank of the Tug River while pulling the Poca- hontas. It was repaired and served until Octo- ber 1959 when it pulled a “last run of steam” excursion. Thanks in part to mechanical work that was done after the Tug River derailment and to the efforts of several individuals, most notably photographer O. Winston Link, No. 611 was saved from the cutting torch. In 1960 No. 611 was donated to the city of Roanoke and
in 1963 was moved to VMT’s predecessor, the Roanoke Transportation Museum, where it was displayed outdoors in Wasena Park, next to the Roanoke River on the south side of town. In 1982, president Robert B. Claytor of the newly-merged Norfolk Southern Railroad stunned
the railfan fraternity when he
arranged to have No. 611 removed from the museum and had it rebuilt for excursion serv- ice at the former Southern Railway steam shop in Birmingham, Ala., as the railroad not only continued, but expanded, the former Southern Railway steam program. After the overhaul, the only visible nod to modernity
STEVE BARRY
ROBERT W. LYNDALL
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