Southern 4501 masquerading as L&N 1593 with TAG #80

9-21-19
TVRM
C&C Railroad
Chickamauga Turn
Chickamauga, GA
Copyright Thomas L. Howard

Southern 4501 (Dressed up as L&N 1593) and TAG 80 {Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia) team up for a special Chickamauga Turn chartered for the L&N Historical society. For this years annual meet of the Louisville & Nashville Historical Society in Chattanooga TN. the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum and society members took the famed 2-8-2 number 4501 and transformed her into a very close representation of an L&N J3 class mikado, number 1593, which is numbered is right behind the final J3 on L&N's roster.

1593 then pulled a special extra long Chickamauga Turn down the C&C in her new L&N guise. Also in the train was newly restored L&N diner Cross Keys Tavern as well.

Since there is no turning facilities at Chickamauga, a diesel was staged there to tow the train back with 1593 running backwards.
The original diesel was suppose to be NC&St.L 710, but the engine is down for 92 day maintenance. T.A.G. 80 was used instead and brought the train back home.

Built for the Tennessee, Alabama & Georgia Railway in 1968, TAG 80 was the last and most powerful engine purchased by that railroad. The engine was named "The John A. Chambliss" in honor of the railroad's vice president, and dedicated on his 80th birthday. The 80 was later sold to the Southern Railway, and later became the property of Norfolk Southern, who sold it at auction to the Chambliss family in 2001, who then donated the locomotive to TVRM. The locomotive was restored mechanically, electrically and cosmetically between 2015 and 2016, returning to service in March 2017. It is a model GP38, developing 2,000 horsepower.

Southern Railway 4501 is a 2-8-2 Mikado-type steam locomotive built in October 1911 by Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as the first of its wheel arrangement type to be built for the Southern Railway. In 1948, the locomotive was retired from the Southern in favor of dieselization and was sold to the shortline Kentucky and Tennessee Railway (K&T) in Stearns, Kentucky to haul coal trains.

When the K&T was dieselized in 1964, No. 4501 was purchased by a railfan named Paul H. Merriman with $5,000 of his own money, and brought to Chattanooga. Shortly thereafter it was returned to steam for excursion service on the Southern Railway's steam program managed by the railroad's president W. Graham Claytor Jr. through Merriman’s 4501 Corporation. In 1979, the locomotive was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Initially turned out in Southern's passenger Virginia green with gold stripping and silver (aluminium) details with whitewall tyres, No. 4501 operated as the main star of Southern's steam program until being replaced by larger steam locomotives in 1985. The locomotive ran again from 1991 until 1994, when Southern's successor Norfolk Southern discontinued the steam program due to rising insurance cost and decreasing rail network availability.

Afterwards, No. 4501 operated for its owner, the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum (TVRM) in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Merriman was a founding member of TVRM alongside Robert “Bob” Soule, and eventually handed 4501 over from his personal property to museum property. Repainted into its circa 1935 freight black livery in 1996, the locomotive was retired when its boiler ticket certificate expired in 1998. With the coming of Norfolk Southern’s 21st Century Steam Program and the success of TVRM's Southern Railway 630, the restoration on No. 4501 began in 2012 and completed in 2014, with period upgrades such as a feedwater heater and mechanical stoker added, which most classmates received but 4501 (once dropped from a crane) long the “Shop Queen” never received. Today, the locomotive operates in tourist excursion service for TVRM, traditionally on the longer trips to Summerville, Georgia throughout the year, and on TVRM's Missionary Ridge Local as needed.