The Southern Railway Heritage Locomotive-A Legacy Remembered

The Southern Railway Heritage Locomotive-A Legacy Remembered
By Andy Fletcher

A lonesome whistle blows around the bend. At Birmingham, the station agent stands, preparing the baggage cart for the awaiting Crescent Limited . The train’s twelve passengers stand in anticipation for New Orleans.
The green and white locomotive appears. A salesman clutches his valise. The station agent hoops up the train orders to the engineer.
A burst of steam blasts from the headend of the train. Two blasts sound from the horn. Highball. The Crescent departs. A remnant from the hey-day of railroading, Southern Railway’s brightly painted green locomotives are but a memory to those who rode their romantically named trains.
Romantically named trains that inspired a romance with the rails. Rails that carried Southerners from their cities and towns to Atlanta and Washington, DC and to gateways of the north and west such as Memphis, Cincinnati and St. Louis. Southern Railway connected the steel mills of Birmingham with a nation at war, and brought the soldiers home as America grew into the Baby Booming generation.
It was in boxcars marked, “Serves the South,” that many got their first automatic washing machine and their first television set upon which they watched the evening news, listened earnestly at state of the unions, and witnessed in awe the first moon landing.
It was through Southern Railway freight clerks that much of the South’s farm goods moved on to markets. Crops of cotton and tobacco made their way to Virginia and points north.
Serves the South was not just a slogan. It was a way of life. The Southern Railway was not just a lifeline, its employees were Southerner’s friends and neighbors. The Southern Railway was their friend and neighbor.
The boxcars rolled onward. The South progressed. The small town freight agent moved from Selma to Birmingham. Times were changing.
The landscape of America was changing. Trucking and the interstate highway system made times hard for the railroad. The world moved faster. The regulator clock still ticked in the station, but the world was moving on.
Many railroad companies found themselves consolidating. Railroads needed to be shortened. Fat needed to be cut from the system for the rails to compete. Railroads joined forces for their routes to flow more smoothly.
The Southern Railway joined with Roanoke’s Norfolk & Western in 1982. Norfolk Southern Railway was formed.
This spring, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Norfolk Southern painted a brand new locomotive in dress inspired by the Southern Crescent passenger train. This livery celebrates the thirtieth anniversary of Norfolk Southern’s creation.
The locomotive painted exceeds today’s clean air emission standards. It has the power of three locomotives of its Southern predecessors. Yet, in its lines, one sees the Southern Railway.
One sees the Crescent Limited passenger train it was fashioned after. One retraces the locomotive’s footsteps along the Southern Railway across the Somkey Mountains at Knoxville where this locomotive’s advanced technology gains its footing.
As you hear the lonesome whistle blow down the track, whether you are in Mississippi or Georgia, Tennessee or Alabama, keep an eye out for this beautifully painted locomotive. Side by side it works with its regularly painted counterparts. A tribute to the past, it rolls down the track, giving the South a chance to see a peek at railroading’s past. This locomotive reflects upon the way railroading once was.
A time when iron rails not only connected us all, but connected our hearts and minds. Upon the back of observation cars of the Southern Railway, the time’s political hopefuls once stood. The bunting rolled up, the train prepared for another town on down the track.
In a time where the next appointment dictates our day, this brightly painted locomotive takes us back to a simpler time, a time when the lull of the rocking chair kept the pace of the evening.
It is not always that we are reminded of the past, of the shoulders that today stands on. We do not always take the time to remember the people and institutions that came before.
It is in the sleek lines of the Southern Railway Heritage locomotive that we see the legacy of the freight agents who punched waybills. We see the farmer who drove to Meridian anticipating his new tractor.
We see the welders who maintained the right of way safely to Atlanta, and passed the torch on to the generations of today’s railroaders. We see a South that grew strong with the Southern Railway.
Most of all, we see a railroad that did not forget its roots. Roots in communities, roots in its people, roots in the Southern landscape. A railroad that is proud of where it came from and is proud of where it is going.