Southern Railway 4501 - History

History

4501 worked on many different divisions of the Southern Railway system from 1911 to 1948; first in Tennessee, then in Virginia, Kentucky, and lastly, in Indiana. In 1948 the Kentucky and Tennessee Railway purchased the locomotive and renumbered it as their #12. When #12 was retired by the Kentucky and Tennessee Railway in 1963, a railfan, Paul H. Merriman, bought the locomotive for The 4501 Corporation with $5,000 of his own money, and restored it for excursion use on the Southern Railway System. In 1964, after running to Chattanooga from the K&T in Stearns, KY, an initial restoration was done by TVRM volunteers at the facilities of the Lucey Boiler Company in Chattanooga, just blocks away from TVRM's then storage facilities at the former Western Union Company tracks. After this restoration was completed, in 1966, the 4501 launched Southern Railway's full scale steam excursion program, which ran for several decades until it was ended by Southern successor Norfolk Southern in 1994. 4501 is currently owned by the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum in Chattanooga, Tennessee (which Merriman founded with Bob Soule), and was on static display. The locomotive last ran in 1998.

In 2008, the locomotive was stripped down for a complete boiler inspection, and Norfolk Southern, in June 2010, announced they would run excursions with 4501, Southern Railway 630, and U.S. Army 610.

4501 has been called "The Green Mikado" because, for the majority of its excursion career, it received the green paint with gold trim that was historically used only on Southern Railway's passenger locomotives. However, being a freight locomotive, 4501 was never painted green during its original operational life on the Southern.