Norfolk and Western 611

If you’ve ever taken a ride on a steam excursion train you know that rail fans will wait beside the tracks, sometimes for hours, just to watch a steam locomotive go by. A better way is to be at the North Carolina Transportation Museum at Spencer when they’re having one of their “At the Throttle Steam” events, that way you can watch all day long if you want to. When I learned that the 611 was returning last September, I knew I had to be there.

Big, powerful and streamlined sleek, the N&W J Class 4-8-4’s were the crest of the last wave of the steam age. By 1941 when the first of the class was built, the technology had evolved to its highest stage of development and the craftsmen at N&W’s Roanoke, Va. Shops were among the best in the world. Norfolk and Western built 14 engines of the J Class to pull their crack passenger trains like the “Cavalier, the Tennessean, Pocahontas, and the Birmingham Special. 

At a time when most of the nation's railroads were eagerly embracing dieselization N&W chose to embark on a program to build state of the art steam locomotives at their Roanoke Shops. The first 5, numbered 600 to 604 rolled out the door between 1941 and 42. Six J-1 class engines, numbered 605 to 610 followed between 43 and 1944. The final three, 611 to 613 were built in 1950.

With a boiler operating at 300 psi to power cylinders with a bore of 27”  X stroke of 32”  that produced 80,000 # tractive effort, the J’s were the most powerful 4-8-4 engines ever built. They were designed to be capable of reaching 140 mph, that is if you could find a section of track that could accommodate a train at that speed. In actual service they did pull up to 15 passenger cars at speeds up to 110 mph.

The 611 rolled out the door at the Roanoke Shops on May 29, 1950 and onto N&W’s engine roster. It cost Norfolk and Western $251,544 to build the engine in house, which might have been a factor in the management’s decision process. The Roanoke Machine Works was founded in 1881 for the purpose of building and maintaining steam locomotives for the N&W and the Shenandoah Valley Railroad. The 60 acre facility  accommodated a foundry, machine shops, smith’s shops, erecting shops, a planing mill, lumber drying sheds, warehouses and a roundhouse. Everything necessary to maintain and build steam locomotives.

That the 611 was one of the last of the J class built, gave it an advantage as a survivor over engines with higher mileage and more hours in service. By 1958 N&W’s passenger service had completed the transition to diesel power and the remaining Js were transferred to freight service or sold as scrap. In 1959 it was chosen to pull the last of the steam railfan excursions that N&W would offer. Today it is the only surviving example of the J class engines and the star of the collection at the Virginia Museum of Transportation. 

This fall the 611 will travel north to the Strasburg Rail Road in Pennsylvania for a series of events that will run from Sept. 27 to Oct. 27 2019. You can learn more about the planned activities by visiting: www.strasburgrailroad.com. 

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org 

www.vmt.org 

www.jstor.org 

www.americanrails.com