Steam & Excursion > Ten Years Ago Today (SOU 4501 - Day 1)

Ten years ago today (June 26th)…

On the last weekend of June 2015, Southern Railway 2-8-2 4501, preserved and maintained by the Tennessee Valley Railway Museum, was slated to make its debut for Norfolk Southern's 21st Century Steam Program by pulling a trio of excursions out of Bristol, Virginia.

Friday and Sunday’s excursions were round trips from Bristol to Radford, VA, named the “Radford Rambler.” Saturday’s round trip, named the “Lonesome Pine Limited,” ran from Bristol to Bulls Gap, Tennessee.

Since TVRM had just completed an operational rebuild on the 4501 in 2014 and these were the first mainline trips for the locomotive in almost two decades, my brother and I headed south to see the locomotive in operation for our first time. Two trips up the former N&W Pulaski District to Radford would also allow us to focus on getting shots of the train passing the endangered N&W color position light signals that still protected the ends of most sidings.

#1. An early start on Friday morning for an almost 500-mile drive mostly down Interstate 81 would put us near Radford around 2:30pm, right when the two-and-a-half hour layover was over and the excursion was scheduled to depart back south (railroad west). We made it with time to spare to Dublin, the first town south of Radford, and set up at the N&W CPLs protecting the east end of the siding, known as Wysor.

#2. Not knowing the size and speed of the chase pack and the difficulty of how it would be chasing led us to make a large jump further south to our next spot, the former N&W station at Rural Retreat, the site of O. Winston Link’s famous Christmas Eve audio recording of “The Pelican.”

#3. Having I-81 paralleling the line allowed us to quickly jump ahead of the train before the next siding 13 miles south near Marion, with the east end signals known as Schuleen on the railroad.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/25 19:05 by cblaz.

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#4. Former Seaboard round end observation-lounge car 6604, then leased by TVRM and now owned by the North Carolina Transportation Museum, brought up the markers of the excursion at Schuleen.

#5. Back in the car and down the road another 15 miles to the next set of signals at the east end of the siding right in the middle of a neighborhood in Glade Spring. 

#6. We grabbed a quick shot at the west end of the siding in Abingdon before beating the train to Bristol, catching its arrival from the middle of State Street, which straddles the border of Virginia and Tennessee. Not a bad photo haul for the day considering we had woken up that morning in New Jersey.

- Chris
 

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You did well!

Super shots - You went out of your way to get interesting views.
Vov

Excellent images of one of my favorite steam engines !
Gary

Great stuff!

After the demise of the original steam program, we definitely learned to enjoy that one while it lasted.  In January of 2010, who would have guessed that we would get to see 611 on Blue Ridge, 765 on Horseshoe and 4501 on the mainline?!?

Mary McPherson
Dongola, IL
Diverging Clear Productions

First rate slides !  Some of the best I've seen on SOU 4501 . Thanks for sharing. 

Great pics!!