Following 611, but Chasing More than Trains

Both the Cumbres & Toltec and Durango & Silverton exist and operate in enclaves. They create a one-foot-in-the-past, one-foot-in-the-present illusion along the tracks and within the limits of their yards. What draws people to these places is the invitation to pretend for that for a few hours, they are someone else, somewhere else, living sometime in the past. The draw is so strong that people come from the far ends of the country, sometimes from the other side of the world,to visit these out-of-the-way railroads.

When a steam locomotive comes to you, on the other hand, it is a completely different experience.

Approximately a month and a half before riding the Colorado narrow gauge railroads, I stood along the tracks leading out of Spencer, North Carolina, and watch the 611 take its first gasping strides towards its longstanding home in Roanoke, Virginia. I was one of tens of thousands--more people came out for this homecoming than for any other railroad-related event I have ever attended. The numbers were completely unprecedented.

Watching a large steam locomotive effortlessly gallop across mainline tracks, passing modern freight trains deferentially halted on sidings, is a surreal experience.  One feels acutely in the moment, and their senses become attuned to hear the whistle in the distance or smell the faintest whiff of coal smoke. Hours of waiting culminate into an experience that stimulates all five of the senses. The train is there and gone in seconds, and yet, that short time when the locomotive at speed is mere feet away seems to stretch on forever. Seeing a ‘captive’ steam locomotive running on a tourist line does not compare to the unreconcilable sight of one unleashed onto active modern tracks.

I got a sense that a significant portion of the people who showed up for the 611‘s debut were attracted by just that sense of awe. Most of them seemed to be well aware that they were watching something completely out of place with the modern world, and that we were watching an event that would stand out as a high point in Roanoke’s long industrial history fifty years into the future. All of the people I encounter talked about the 611 in proud, familial terms. There was no minority who seemed to think that the media attention and municipal festivities leading up to the 611‘s return were overblown, and there were exceptionally few people along the track that had been caught off guard by news of locomotive’s return.

There were a couple thousand more people waiting for the 611 to arrive in Downtown Roanoke. It was here, arriving in the locomotive’s home territories, that I began to understand that there had been something more than the usual factors inspiring people to turn out. They had been moved by more than just a fascination with the mechanics of steam power, even considering that the 611 represented the absolute perfection of steam locomotive design. It had been more than the chance to see something highly unusual in the modern world. I could not quite put  my finger on what, exactly, was different about this event, but it was enough that more than one person present was moved to tears.

Unfortunately, much of the railroad infrastructure around the East End shops where the 611 was constructed no longer exists, but the railroad’s influence shows in the sorting yard that bisects the city almost completely from east to west, in the names and iconography of local business. Many of the passengers and crew members who came into town on the 611 stayed at the Hotel Roanoke, originally constructed by the Norfolk and Western to house crews staying in the area overnight. Norfolk Southern is currently in the process of relocating the few corporate jobs still based in Roanoke, but their trains still run through downtown Roanoke at ten minute intervals. The city’s cultural lifeblood still pulses to the rhythm of wheels rolling over jointed rail.

The 611 sat for several days in the Virginia Museum of Transportation, available for the admiration and accolades. Several of the neighboring institutions threw their doors open to the guests. I visited the O. Winston Link museum, which displayed the tools and best known works of the photographer who  chronicled the Norfolk & Western during its protracted transition to diesel power. His black-and-white images typically included both mechanical and human subjects--unusual in the world of railroad art--and capture the acute discomfort that comes when an outdated but familiar technology is replaced with something newer.

It was walking around in this museum, occasionally feeling the ground under my feet vibrate when the 611‘s whistle moaned to salute the crowds, that I began to find the right words for that undercurrent I sensed among the crowds. They were’t just fascinated by the mechanics, or happy to see a project that brought thousands of financial donors and volunteers together. Beneath all that, they were relieved.

Relief was a strange word to settle on, as it’s usually a word you bring out when disaster has been averted, but it was accurate. The crowds at each location seemed to relax each time the 611 was heard or seen, the same reflex as when the last match finally ignites the campfire. They all understood that while there is no way to prevent time from blanching the color of their grandfathers’ Roanoke out of the contemporary version, the city’s last native daughter could stand in for everything that gave the city its room to boast.

It’s unusual to think of a machine specifically designed to close distances in terms of it being tied to a certain place, but I didn’t consider this limiting to the 611 in any way. Roanoke became strong from building the Norfolk & Western and the fine machines that ran across its territory and the 611, in turn, has risen again and again because the people of Roanoke consider it worthy to sustain that legacy. I picked up that many of them considered the 611 to be a sort of eternal flame, a protective spirit wafting its benevolence across the city. Something real and tangible would have been lost if the Fire Up 611! campaign had failed to come to fruition. A coldness would have set in.

This--more than the sight of the machine itself--is what brought out enough people to clog the highways south of Roanoke. They came out to breath deep of the new life infused in their town. They came to gain assurance that for the next few decades, at one part of their heritage will continue on as it has for more than a century. They came out for far more than just to see a locomotive belonging to another era. They came to nourish their own roots, and to restore their future.