Roanokers crowd downtown to watch 611 roll home

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The Roanoke (Va.) Times, May 30, 2015



Roanokers crowd downtown to watch 611 roll home



By Duncan Adams



William Stovall stopped for a break at a beer joint on Williamson Road while hitchhiking home some six decades ago from the Boston Naval Yard to Glade Spring.



With the Korean War behind him, the young Navy veteran needed a job. Two old guys at the bar told Stovall that Norfolk & Western was hiring.



"I got a job before I even got home," Stovall recalled.



On Saturday afternoon, the 82-year-old former railroad man waited in the shade beneath the Williamson Road bridge for the much ballyhooed, steam-driven homecoming of the N&W Class J 611 locomotive.



It turned out to be a long, hot, wilting wait for throngs of people lining the tracks in downtown Roanoke near the former N&W passenger station. But few complained. A subset of the youngest kids were wriggly and wrought, but even they rallied when the wait ended and their parents' dreams of giving their children lifelong memories were realized.



About 4:30 p.m., the first sighting of smoke roused the crowd. And as the steam engine's throaty and powerful chuff-chuff-chuff came closer and the sleek, gleaming machine passed by, people responded with cheers, tears and awe.



Mechanicsville resident John Tiller, 82, the grandson of a railroad man, was in Roanoke for the event. He said he was a child in Richmond when his father would lift him high enough to see the steam locomotives pass.



For some rail buffs like Tiller, the turn to diesel locomotives bled much of the romance from the industry. The iron horses were put out to pasture, scrapped, abandoned.



"I kind of lost interest after they got rid of the steam engines," he said.



Stovall said he once worked as a fireman on N&W steam locomotives that included the 611 and the Class A 1218. As a footloose single man in Roanoke in the mid-1950s, he moved from one place to another in the city.



"I had a brand-new car. I had money. It was great," he recalled with a broad smile.



He lost his job when the railroad replaced steam locomotives with diesel-fueled engines. Stovall ultimately became a truck driver, but his memories of minding the steam boiler remain strong.



On Saturday, spectators packed the pedestrian overpass that links Hotel Roanoke to downtown, the Martin Luther King Jr. foot bridge, and both the Williamson Road and Second Street bridges. Others lounged in the shade, including some who staked out a place under a towering magnolia at Hotel Roanoke.



Madison Sink, 13, and her brother, Connor, 9, found a spot to sit on the pedestrian overpass to watch for 611's approach from the east after the locomotive stopped to load water at Lynchburg.



"Seeing it come back is going to bring back memories for many people," Madison said.



One such person stood nearby. Dennis Wimbush, 61, once worked for the railroad as an assistant trainmaster. He said he frequently travels by train.



Iva Ferguson stood in the shade of artist Thomas Bradshaw's tent at the annual Sidewalk Art Show downtown.



"I haven't slept for two nights," Ferguson said. "Not only do I have art today but I also have trains."



As a toddler growing up in Roanoke, Ferguson reacted with fear to the sound of train whistles. But once she understood the whistle's source, she became a hardcore railroad fan who also likes Porsche automobiles.



"Driving a Porsche is like driving a work of art," Ferguson said. "The 611 is the same way. It's a work of art. It's a symbol of Roanoke, a symbol of people who worked their whole lives for the railroad."



Bradshaw's art included a portrait of the 611 steaming through the countryside. He painted it just days ago, he said, working from photographs. The oil paint was still wet.



Railroad aficionado Matt Godbey, 48, said that as a child, he was also scared the first time he saw and heard a steam locomotive. But his father, David Godbey, was a machinist who carefully detailed precisely how the locomotive worked. He said his father wanted him not to fear "something so beautiful."



Janet Anderson, John Anderson, Lori Graham and her son, Brock Graham, 2 years old, traveled in an RV from the vicinity of Toledo, Ohio, for the 611 homecoming. Brock Graham has a penchant for mimicking train whistles.



Roanoke County resident Jimmie Tooley, 73, said trainmen on coal trains near his childhood home of McComas, West Virginia, often let him board the caboose for short periods of time. He said the men hid him if a railroad detective came around and knocked three times when the coast was clear.



William Simulcick of Woodford, Virginia, said he will turn 74 Monday. His wife, Helen Ann, and son, William, brought him to Roanoke for his birthday. He took no chances and arrived at the tracks downtown around 8:30 a.m.



He said he believes the affection for steam locomotives reflects a longing for simpler, slower and safer times, when extended families sat down together for meals and life moved at a reasonable pace.



More than one person said Saturday that steam locomotives seem to be alive themselves, chuffing and chugging and blowing off steam.



Walt Johnson, 69, traveled from Williamsburg for a glimpse of the 611. After it passed and headed toward the Virginia Museum of Transportation, Johnson described how he felt.



"Like a kid at Christmas," he said.