My visit to The Virginia Museum of Transportation

     I recently went to the Virginia Museum of Transportation, located in Roanoke, where I had a tour from a fellow who actually worked for the railroad for seven years before working at the museum. It was a great tour of the trains and of the transportation of yesterday and today.

     He showed me one coal-burning class J locomotive, the only one left of its kind. The first locomotive is Norfolk & Western class J 611, and she entered service around 1950. It served as a passenger train, and could run up to 110-140 miles per hour. She could pull a 15 car train at 115 MPH. She can hold 35 tons of coal in her tender, and 20,000 gallons of water. She was retired in 1959 until she was returned to excursion service in 1982. She ran as a excursion train until 1994, when she entered the Virginia Museum of Transportation, where she had been before. She ran between Cincinnati, OH and Norfolk, VA.  She also ran between Monroe, NC and Bristol, TN. She is restored and the museum is doing research to try to get her to run again. For more information about 611,      the website is: http://www.fireup611.org/main/index.php.

     There is Plexi-glass in 611,  because regular people have been stealing levers and gauges, and then they put it up on E bay as a "collectors item". He then showed me Class A locomotive 1218. It is restored, but there are missing parts scattered all over the tender. It is the only locomotive of its kind to escape the scrap yard.   For more info on these trains: http://vmt.org/collections/rail.htm

     After I saw 611, I was able to go inside a 1963 GMC bus, and I was able to sit in the driver's seat. The bus can run and it is in good condition. The doors, however, have to opened by hand because the bus has not been used in a while, so the things that open the doors have broken. The truck directly behind it is a 1965 Bull Dog Mack truck, which is fully restored and it can run. It even has a little bull dog on it.  I then saw two operating trains moving cars for a steam train excursion next week. The steam train is coming up from North Carolina, and will do a excursion train. I was actually allowed to walk up to the diesel locomotives and see the interior of them. The yard switcher does not have a bathroom, but is similar to the other diesel locomotive.

     A little later on in my tour, in a train cab, My tour guide told me and two other guys stories about when he worked for the railroad. He told a story about a jogger that got run over by the train. The jogger was wearing headphones and jogging across the trestle.  The train crew noticed the jogger, and they were blowing the horn and the conductor was shouting. The jogger got to the track directly across the trestle, and then he did a thing that cost him his life. He turned around and froze. The dirt was only 2 feet away. The train hit him at 55 MPH, with brakes on and everything. The jogger was tossed up and thrown into the coupling and he was cut up.  They told my tour guide this, but they did not tell him that there was a hand wedged between the hand rails. My tour guide noticed the hand during an inspection of the train, and he took off. Someone had to go and get him, and they even bought him a Dr. Pepper to calm him down.   

     He told a couple more stories, and then his friend went by in a diesel locomotive hauling 76 cars to Chicago, where he was expected at 9 AM in the morning the next day. My tour guide started yelling at him to give the locomotive more horsepower. He said to count all of the cars, and I lost track about 65.  After, I was able to see a 1930 Dodge school bus. There were no seat belts in those days, and there was no ventilation in the bus. High school kids sat on the outside, and elementary kids sat on the inside. The roads were not paved, so if your bus got stuck, you were given a shovel and you had to dig your bus out. I was impressed. After that, the tour ended. I thought that the tour guide had explained everything pretty well to me and I liked the 611 locomotive most of all, because it stands out and it is a beautiful locomotive. 

     The museum itself is a great museum if you are into transportation, and I think that the museum should continue to restore locomotives for people to see as they were back in their time. Class J #611 is going to be tested to see if it can be returned to excursion service, and I think it would be great to have a 1950's train in today's railroads.