Should 4501 Have Been Painted Green?

Photo by David Lester.

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you know that I was a teenager in the 1970s when the Southern Railway excursion program was in full swing, and 4501 was among the most revered locomotives on Southern rails during those years. And, it was during those years that then-Trains editor David P. Morgan penned a book on the engine, entitled Locomotive 4501.

When the engine rolled out at Railfest last year, it was resplendent in black paint with yellow/gold lettering. I suppose this was an NS/TVRM decision, and I believe most folks were happy with the choice. Certainly the purists were happy, as they should have been, and I received feedback from some that they were so glad to see the green gone.

While the engine certainly looks great, I have to disagree with many of my friends on the choice of paint color. While black is indeed the “correct” color for 4501, there was something special about the green paint that it wore during most of it’s career in the 1970s. I presume that W. Graham Claytor was the driving force to paint it green, and it was photographed so many times in green that many folks came to believe that this was the best color for it. After all, Southern had many freight engines painted green, although not the class to which 4501 belonged. And, many will remember that the 722, a sister consolidation to 630, was also painted green. If painted in the correct shade of green, with the gold lettering, as shown in the image above, I think the engine would remind us of not only the rich green and gold heritage of SR freight and passenger engines during the days of steam, but also pay tribute to the many, many years that it ran in excursion service in green and gold. The image above shows the engine and train returning from an Atlanta-to-Toccoa, Ga. round trip in the autumn of 1976.

One of the treats of being at the TVRM Railfest last year was that I was covering the event for Trains magazine, and we had a live webcam feed during the event, and I was able to interview several folks who had long been involved with Southern/Norfolk Southern steam, including Tim Andrews, president of TVRM, Steve Freer with TVRM, and Bill Schafer, retired from NS, but who has been very active in the NS 21st Century Steam program. One of my favorite interviews was with John Gruber, who was David Morgan’s hand-picked photographer to cover the original debut of 4501 back in the 1960s and 70s. John was the principal photographer for the book Locomotive 4501, and he had a copy of the book with him during my interview. It was a proud moment for me, being able to interview John in 2014 while he held a copy of the classic book he helped produce in the early 1970s, forty years prior. And, the dust jacket of the book featured a beautiful image of the engine painted in green and gold.

I have heard rumors that, in the coming years, those responsible for such decisions may decide to alternate the painting of 4501 between green and black. That is my hope. I may be wrong, but I bet that somewhere deep in the hearts of the most ardent purists around 4501’s paint color, there is a desire to see it polishing the rails with the classic Southern Railway green and gold paint scheme once again.