Steam Locomotives

They spoke of injectors, running smooth as silk. Of the joys of hand-firing a stoker-fed engine, just because. Of sure-footed drivers and the challenge of "holding back" a Lima lady they felt was born to run. One of them respectfully admitted he had stayed away from the museum for many years, unable to bring himself to see her spilled out in pieces around the shop. But mostly their words were pride married to affection, as the stories of taking Two Ninety over the road poured out of them like sand on the rails.

Conrad Cheney. Bill Dennington. Foster Peterson. A trio of servants in the court of a queen. We had gathered at the museum to hear them remember their years on the footplate of Atlanta & West Point #290, when she was brought back from retirement for a round of mainline excursions and many New Georgia dinner trains. They were young men then. Thinner. Wide-eyed. Eager to touch levers and shovels about which their grandfathers knew so much more. Each of them stumbled his way into the Two Ninety court by what seemed like happenstance; all of them now admit she is the finest steam locomotive they have ever run. Throughout our evening, they paid their requisite homage to the likes of 4501 and 750 (who sits just outside the room where we met) — veterans of southeastern fan trips. But over and over again, they returned to construction number 7008 as the finest Lima ever had to offer. Powerful, smooth, easy to fire and steam, with a grip that made moving down the mainline a pleasure. One hymn they sang with us had many stanzas: stories of CSX pilot engineers assuming she was slow and fragile, only to stand gripped in awe in the cab as she easily got up into 50s and 60s and held her freights there over the hogbacks of Georgia and Alabama. "She always wanted to get up and go."

Maybe one day she'll get up again from her slumber. Until then, three princes fondly— proudly—remember their Queen.