Thanksgiving 1958

As I sit here in 2020 just the wife and I will enjoy a Turkey dinner together. As I look over the valley where the railroad is, its only a few miles from my boyhood home which overlooked the same valley where the Norfolk and Westerns line from Cincinnati climbed a decent grade for about 5-6 miles. I may have told this story before, but I believe there are many who were not on this board when I did, so please excuse the repeat for some.

In July of 1958 The Norfolk and Western removed steam from its passenger trains. Portsmouth and Cincinnati are 100 miles apart, and since Cincinnati Union Terminal charged the railroads a hefty fee, the N&W did not use their coal facilities, thus engines came in and went back out generally on the next runs. With steam gone from passenger duties no standby power was kept in Cincinnati. There were some duties in Portsmouth, and one or two J Class 4-8-4's were kept there as standby power, or for a local freight job.

On Thanksgiving day 1958 my mom and dad, brother, and an older couple who were friends of the family were sitting around eating the festive dinner. I believe we were generally finished with the main course when we heard the unmistakeable sound of a J whistle, which we could tell was blowing for the Clough Road crossing in Batavia headed east for Cincinnati. This must be a special move of some sort dad thought. "Okay boys get your coats we are going to check it out". The couple we had over for Thanksgiving(Oh we had our meal around 1 pm or so) and my mom where shocked that dad was leaving the guests and mom there as we all bolted for the door. Now the Cincinnati Union Terminal is about 22-24 miles from here, and we were later rewarded to find that one of the 4-8-4 J-Class (They were numbered 600-613, and we believe it was either 601 or 613, since they had been assigned to standby service in Portsmouth) was there to pull a train east. One must also remember during this time the N&W was in a big hurry to get rid of steam, so the removed perfectly good steam power and replaced it with leased E units from the Atlantic Coast Line, and The RF&P, because the N&W passenger GP9's were still not finished.

The 4-8-4 powered the eastbound troop train which was likely headed to Norfolk, VA where there are big naval facilities. We chased it about 50 miles or so then had to backtrack west to Batavia. It was one of the last 2 steam moves on the N&W line through here In November of 1958. My brother and I fondly recall(he was 4 and I was 7) getting to see one of the last runs of steam through our home town. Now on the other hand my mom and the Johnsons would recall for years how Warren and boys up and left during Thanksgiving Diner.

So while my story is not narrow gauge, it is still steam related, and is true!

Happy Turkey Day to all

Greg Scholl

A photo of the last remaining Class J 4-8-4 611 on an excursion from Greensboro to Roanoke in April of 2017. It has not operated on the mainline since 2017 so we were glad we went. Photo on the grade north of Danville by my wife Kathi Scholl




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/2020 10:50AM by Greg Scholl.