April 9, 2016: Spencer to Lynchburg and back behind Norfolk & Western's No. 611 Locomotive
We took a wonderful day trip on April 9th this year from the North Carolina Transportation Museum site in Spencer to the train station in Lynchburg, Virginia. We were able to tour the Transportation Museum in Spencer the afternoon before the train trip. The Museum itself is a wonderful place to visit if you like trains (I plead guilty), with many exhibits and pieces of railroad equipment. No. 611 departed for Lynchburg the next morning at 7 a.m. pulling more than 30 cars filled with over 900 train lovers like us. My sister Rosemary and her husband, Bruce, were with us. We arrived in Lynchburg just before 1 p.m. and met a friend of ours living in Lynchburg whom we hadn't seen in donkey years. He drove us to a little off-the-beaten-path sandwich shop far from the madding crowd (900 people looking for lunch in downtown Lynchburg) where we could enjoy a quiet lunch and some catching up. The train left for the return trip shortly after 3:30 p.m., arriving at the Museum site in Spencer just before 10 p.m. A long day, but more than worth it.
The Norfolk & Western No. 611 locomotive we rode behind was restored at the Spencer shops at the North Carolina Transportation Museum. One of fourteen 4-8-4 locomotives built for Norfolk & Western passenger service, it was in service from 1950 to 1959 when it, like so many steam engines in the 1950s, was replaced by diesel power. It's a magnificent machine, and the only one of the original fourteen Norfolk & Western 4-8-4s still in existence. Here are a few pictures of No. 611 captured at the Transportation Museum site the day before the trip.
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Here are some shots taken during our self-guided tour of the Train Museum. The railroad engines and cars are stationed in the old Spencer Shops roundhouse, and the tour consists largely of walking around the roundhouse perimeter. There are also exhibits of other types of transportation. These pictures represent just a few of the interesting things to see.
Atlantic Coast Line The Champion diesel engine No. 501. This engine logged over 5 million miles for the ACL, very likely many of them between New York and St. Petersburg, before it was retired.
