No, I did not get a picture — which is why I am relying on the below photo from Wikimedia Commons. Roaring through town yesterday morning was the vintage Norfolk & Western Class J #611, “The Spirit of Roanoke.” You can read about it here at the Virginia Museum of Transportation.
Steam trains are pretty damn loud, as it turns out. And those columns of steam are tremendous.
It’s really cool looking too — it has a black-and-red, 50’s-era design. (It was built in 1950.)
In the late 1950’s the like-new J Class 4-8-4’s, owned by the Norfolk & Western, found themselves on their last duties hauling short passengers and local freights before finally being retired and eventually scrapped due to the advent and arrival of first generation diesels. Only one member of the iconic J Class avoided that fate, which is preserved and operated by the Virginia Museum of Transportation, and that’s #611. Joined by her smaller and much older counterpart at the Strasburg Railroad, M Class 4-8-0 #475 is dressed up as sister engine #382, famous in O. Winston Link’s photographs of the Abingdon Branch of the Norfolk & Western, as a part of Lerro Photography’s Photo Extravaganza weekend. Both engines are hauling consists similar to the ones the Mighty J Class and the Venerable M Class might have pulled, such as the Virginia Creeper for the 382, or perhaps a short freight out of Crewe, VA for the 611
“The Sting” (1973) was probably the first movie I ever saw starring Robert Redford; it was a family favorite that made the rounds on television in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. (Though I will note here that “A Bridge Too Far” (1977), was also a family favorite, and also circulating on television in roughly the same time. Redford was in that film too.)
I remember asking my father how the ruse worked for that guy in the beginning who fell for the handkerchief trick. And I remember the movie’s theme music (Floyd Cramer’s “The Entertainer”) being an impossible earworm.
The next movie I saw starring Redford would probably be “All the President’s Men” (1976) when I was 14 or so; that was with my uncle John Muth, who had a wealth of such treasures on VHS. After that, it was the wonderful “Sneakers” (1992) in the theater in my college town of Fredericksburg, Virginia.
What I remember about Redford is just how goddam likeable he was in every role. It was uncanny — there was just something about him. It’s kind of like Carey Grant was so inexplicably suave, or how Harrison Ford always seems so sincere. I’ll bet something like that can’t be learned in an acting class.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 