Pacing Southern

This shot didn't quite make the cut for the main video because i thought the windy audio messed up the sound quality. So I thought I would make it into a separate video. Enjoy!



Southern Railway No. 4501 is a 2-8-2 Mikado-type steam locomotive built in October 1911 by Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as the first of its wheel arrangement type to be built for the Southern Railway. In 1948, the locomotive was retired from the Southern in favor of dieselization and was sold to the shortline Kentucky and Tennessee Railway (K&T) in Stearns, Kentucky to haul coal trains.

When the K&T was dieselized in 1964, No. 4501 was purchased by a railfan named Paul H. Merriman with $5,000 of his own money, and brought to Chattanooga. Shortly thereafter it was returned to steam for excursion service on the Southern Railway's steam program managed by the railroad's president W. Graham Claytor Jr. through Merriman’s 4501 Corporation. In 1979, the locomotive was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Initially turned out in Southern's passenger Virginia green with gold stripping and silver (aluminium) details with whitewall tyres, No. 4501 operated as the main star of Southern's steam program until being replaced by larger steam locomotives in 1985. The locomotive ran again from 1991 until 1994, when Southern's successor Norfolk Southern discontinued the steam program due to rising insurance cost and decreasing rail network availability.

Afterwards, No. 4501 operated for its owner, the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum (TVRM) in Chattanooga, Tennessee. (Merriman was a founding member of TVRM alongside Robert “Bob” Soule, and eventually handed 4501 over from his personal property to museum property. Repainted into its circa 1935 freight black livery in 1996, the locomotive was retired when its boiler ticket certificate expired in 1998. With the coming of Norfolk Southern’s 21st Century Steam Program and the success of TVRM's Southern Railway No. 630, the restoration on No. 4501 began in 2012 and completed in 2014, with period upgrades such as a feedwater heater and stoker added, which most classmates received but 4501 (once dropped from a crane) long the “Shop Queen” never received. Today, the locomotive operates in tourist excursion service for TVRM, traditionally on the longer trips to Summerville, Georgia throughout the year, and on TVRM's Missionary Ridge Local as needed.