As everyone who lives in the area must know, the Class J locomotive, 611, will soon steam back into Roanoke from its restoration at the Spencer, NC shops. The exact date and time will be widely publicized. It should be an occasion to gather up children and grandchildren for choosing a trackside spot to view the spectacle.
The power and presence of the steam locomotive has long since been replaced by the hugely efficient super diesels but those are lifeless creatures compared to the Class J and its ilk. The sounds of a half-million pounds of motive power surging up a mountain grade or blasting out of a tunnel at sixty miles an hour has a resonance the deep-throated throb of diesel can only envy.
Should you see number 611 in its thunderous magic here’s a bit of history that is worth knowing. The first class J, 600, was built in the Roanoke East End Shop in 1941 and was followed by more than a dozen siblings. How 611 escaped the cutting torch is another story. When it was taken out of service in the 1950s someone had the foresight to realize it should be preserved; that it would ever see action again was not considered. The blue prints were thrown into a dumpster but a young N&W employee in the engineering department asked Mr. Harry Wyatt, the chief engineer, if he could retrieve them. Years later, when Robert Claytor, the president of the N&W and himself a former road locomotive engineer, made the decision to reactivate the 611, the blueprints were nowhere to be found . . . but they were located and sold back to the railroad by the foresighted dumpster diver.
Mr. Claytor and his brother Graham, who was president of The Southern Railway System, occasionally would take the throttle of the 611 on excursion trips but always with a seasoned steam locomotive engineer by his side. I have personally known a number of those skilled men, many of whom promised me a ride in the cab, but that day never came and back into the transportation museum the class J went.
Now she is steaming back into this century and there is history not often remembered or repeated about the Class J. Designed for passenger service, she was the most powerful locomotive of that wheel configuration, the 4-8-4, ever built. The war had just started and the passenger train traffic through Roanoke increased dramatically. The faster trains, the Pocahontas and the Cavalier, eastbound for Norfolk were jam packed with servicemen headed for the ports of Hampton Roads and shipping out to combat.
While they appeared to my youthful eyes as seasoned veterans, many were barely out of childhood. Often they would have to change from other trains in Roanoke and could be seen walking, some aimlessly, around town. I saw one poor soul, drunk as a loon, stopping to salute every telephone pole.
On Sundays there would always be several dozen in uniform at church and the pastor would remind the congregation to invite them home to Sunday dinner (there was such a thing in those days) and then take them to the train station for their connection. I remember they were generally quiet during the meal, politely answering questions about their homes in Illinois, Texas, or states that were totally foreign to me. As an adult I have often wondered if that were the last home cooked meal some of them ever ate.
The Pocahontas and the Cavalier, then simply called troop trains, were so crowded that the aisles were packed with standing servicemen so a second section of the train was added, following the scheduled train by only a few minutes. A white flag flew from the cowling of the Class J signaling that it was an extra section. How many tens of thousands of troops passed through Roanoke on those trains on a one-way trip has always been a haunting question.
So if you see Class J 611 charging westbound up the slopes of the Blue Ridge, remember those who rode east behind it over seventy years ago making us free and safe to stand in wonder at what they accomplished, what they sacrificed. The sound of those mighty machines shook the ground . . . shook the air . . . shook the future.
Hayden Hollingsworth
