Southern Railway 4501 25th Anniversary

Former Southern Railway 2-8-2 number 4501 is the star of this program. See 4501 throughout her career! We begin with rare historic film footage of 4501 as engine 12 on the Kentucky and Tennessee Railroad in the early 1960s. Then we see 4501 in early Southern Steam Excursion Service along with a few other Southern engines. The majority of the program was shot when 4501 took to the rails to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the Southern and Norfolk Southern Steam Excursion Program in 1991. We’ll see a short freight run from Salisbury, North Carolina to Asheville including scenes at the Loops on the Old Fort line. Then we follow the train to Knoxville, which includes a cab ride from Newport, Tennessee to Knoxville. Other trips include some coverage of the return trip of an excursion from Oneida to Chattanooga and some scenes of a southbound portion of a Cincinnati to Lexington run. We enjoy a 4501 trip west from Chattanooga, then the capper is the tripleheader as 4501 leads 611 and 1218 on a run. Later they all split and we get a few more shots of 4501 on a passenger train.