The Clinchfield No. 1 Tennessee's Legendary Steam Engine

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NEW TITLE N O W AVA I L A B L E

978.1.62619.596.7 { Paperback, 160

pp ,

$19.99 }

AUGUST 2014 the history press • charleston, sc www.historypress.net


In 1972, this promotional poster was printed to celebrate “the railroad in the sky.” Ticket sales were booming and getting national publicity. T.D. Moore’s dream was moving full steam ahead. Image courtesy of Mike Tilley.


Rarely has an American success story had as many twists and turns as that of the Clinchfield No. 1, a plucky little steam engine that found national fame and adoration in the 1960s and 1970s along Appalachian mountain railroad tracks – and far beyond. In The Clinchfield No. 1: Tennessee’s Legendary Steam Engine, authors Mark A. Stevens and A.J. “Alf” Peoples tell, for the first time anywhere, the everyday stories that made the locomotive a fabled symbol of survival and revival. The book features nearly eighty vintage photographs, many never before seen by the general public. Many of the stories, too, will be new to readers and railroad enthusiasts despite decades of massive media coverage from venerable publications such as the New York Times. The steam engine was built in 1882 and led the first relief train to reach the victims of the infamous 1889 Johnstown, Pennsylvania flood. In the late 1800s and until the 1950s, the locomotive spent many decades helping to build the Clinchfield Railroad and working deep inside the forests of the Appalachian mountains hauling timber and feldspar. But the steam engine story turned from that of a forgotten workhorse to a celebrated fable in 1968, when Clinchfield Railroad general manager Thomas D. Moore found the locomotive, already an antique, in a ruin of rust and rot in the Erwin, Tennessee railroad yard. Moore, a railroadman with a businessman’s vision, ordered the engine to be rebuilt to lead excursions from Kentucky to South Carolina. Now, utilizing invaluable materials available at East Tennessee State University’s Archives of Appalachia and interviews, Stevens and Peoples have pieced together the captivating story of the real-world little engine that could. The book captures the spirit of railroaders who worked to turn an antique steam engine into the nation’s oldest working locomotive. Those interviewed include ninety-four-year-old George Hatcher, who served as fireman aboard the No. 1 for eleven years, and current U.S. senator and former Tennessee governor Lamar Alexander, who rode behind the No. 1 in 1972 and 1978 as part of a whistle-stop campaign launched by U.S. senator Howard Baker Jr. Stevens, who spent twenty-five years as a newspaper editor and publisher in Tennessee and Louisiana, said he recognized the No. 1’s immediate appeal for storytelling: “The No. 1 had it all – intrigue, rebirth and revival mixed with sadness, anger and celebration.” The Clinchfield No. 1: Tennessee’s Legendary Steam Engine will be available for purchase at local bookstores and online at Historypress.net and Amazon.com. Many thanks, Sarah Falter

Sarah Falter Publicity at The History Press


The Town of Erwin planned to display the engine in a public park, but that never happened. And unfulfilled promises led to devastating consequences. Courtesy Martha Erwin/Clinchfield Railroad Museum.

More than five thousand people took rides behind the Clinchfield No. 1 when the locomotive brought an excursion train to South Carolina’s Lowcountry in 1978. Dozens watch as the No. 1 arrives in Andrews. Photo by Mary A. Cagle.


ROSEBUD, RESTORED & REVIVED

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s general manager for Erwin, Tennessee–based Clinchfield Railroad, Thomas D. Moore found an eighty-six-year-old vintage 4-6-0 ten-wheeler steam engine—the Clinchfield No. 1. Miraculously, the engine had escaped the cutter’s torch when, in the mid-1950s, the railroad retired its steam fleet, shuttered passenger service and embraced the diesel era. Moore wanted the No. 1 fully restored and its long life on the rails—which had included being the first train to reach the victims of the 1889 Johnstown, Pennsylvania flood—celebrated as a goodwill ambassador for the railroad. The revived Clinchfield No. 1 led beloved excursion trains that visited seven state capitals, bringing joy to passengers from the Appalachian Mountains to Tampa, Florida. Join authors Mark A. Stevens and A.J. “Alf” Peoples on the journey of the real-life little engine that could.

The History Press is proud to present this new title:

T he C linchfield N o . 1: T ennessee ’ s L egendary S team E ngine by

M ark A. S tevens

and

A.J. “A lf ” P eoples

978.1.62619.596.7 { Paperback, 160

pp ,

$19.99 }

AUGUST 2014

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

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ark A. Stevens has served as an editor and publisher of both weekly and daily newspapers in Tennessee and Louisiana in an award-winning journalism career spanning more than 25 years. He has been recognized for his work by Washington, D.C.-based Presstime Magazine, the Tennessee and Louisiana press associations and the Society of Professional Journalists. He is president of MAS Communications, a South Carolina publishing and marketing company. In 2010, he received the Unicoi County Historical Society Walter Garland Award for History Preservation.

A

.J. “Alf” Peoples is a third-generation railroader. In 2014, he retired as a locomotive engineer from CSX Transportation. His first job was as a car marshal with the Clinchfield Railroad in 1969. Today, he is active as a member of the board of directors of the Clinchfield Railroad Museum and the Unicoi County Heritage Museum. He is a member of the Carolina-Clinchfield and Watauga Valley chapters of the National Railway Historical Association. In 2014, the East Tennessee Historical Society named Alf and Mark as recipients of its Award of Distinction for their work in preserving the history of the Clinchfield No. 1.


Excerpt from The Clinchfield No. 1: Tennessee’s Legendary Steam Engine

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Rebuilding, Remodeling and the True Making of the Clinchfield No. 1

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.D. Moore Jr., the just-on-the-job general manager, had asked the question, “Can you make that engine run?” and P.O. Likens, as the good chief mechanical officer he was, had answered in the affirmative but with the caveat, “It may take a little money, a lot of work and time to beg, buy and make parts.” And according to H. Reid, Moore’s immediate reply was: “Do it.”    Likens, a longtime railroader with expert knowledge of steam engines, was the take-charge man for the job. He’s credited with drawing up a diagram for the locomotive’s rebuild, complete with height and width measurements for everything from the wheels to the boiler to the cab. Moore recognized the monumental task he was asking of Likens and his team of workers. In 1971, he told Sandlapper magazine, “It was so rusted the cab was almost gone. A tree had grown up between the tank and the main body…I knew what I was going to do with it the minute I saw it. I was going to put Old No. 1 back on the line.” To do so meant a change in company policy, as the Clinchfield’s steam engines had more or less been retired in 1953, with passenger service being discontinued two years later in 1955. The decision to stop passenger service came about over several months and coincided with the decline of the steam locomotive, a disappointing fact to many who loved to ride the rails along one of the most beautiful routes in the nation. In a March 3, 1954 letter to Clinchfield superintendent D.H. Hendrix, R.M. Emery of Port Jefferson, New York, wrote, “I hate to bother you with such trivial matters, but two other fellows and myself are planning a trip on your line in April on train #37 or 38 over the entire line. Now what we all want to know is this: Is #37 and 38 still hauled by a steam engine or not? That’s all we want to find out, whether it’s steam or not.” Superintendent Hendrix replied,


“In answer to your question, we are now using a diesel locomotive on trains Nos. 37 and 38. We have twelve steam locomotives in service on the Clinchfield at this time, and they are used only in case of emergency. Our present plans call for complete dieselization by end of this year.” Mr. Emery and his friends, it seems, were too late and too early, as passenger and steam service were winding down in 1954 and they were nearly fourteen years away from Moore’s daring plan to return both steam and passenger service to the Clinchfield.   A story about Moore in Erskine College’s alumni magazine noted that the railroad’s board of directors approved $9,500 for the restoration of the Clinchfield No. 1. Work began on No. 1’s metamorphosis on September 23, 1968, just thirteen days after the railroad paid $1 to the Town of Erwin and officially took back the engine from the municipality.    “So followed an extensive overhaul,” wrote Bill Cannon in his role as the Clinchfield’s press representative. “After all, the last steamer had long ago been overhauled in the big shops. But the skills were still in Erwin, and everybody wanted to help.” Not that it was easy. First “was the routing of a nest of yellow jackets from No. 1’s innards,” Railroading magazine detailed in 1969, and then there was the sting that the “engine was a mess,” as Likens told Brooks Pepper, columnist for the West Virginia Hillbilly newspaper in August 1969. “We retubed it, replaced the pilot, cab, stack and tender underframe, installed a lubrication system, had the drivers turned—the men really worked hard on that engine,” Likens said, “but they enjoyed it. We got it out of the shop in time for the Santa Claus special in November, and it’s been on the go ever since.”    H. Reid’s booklet provides a list of Likens’s early accomplishments with the rebuild, assisted by nearly four dozen Clinchfield workers, some on the clock, some on the job simply because they loved the idea of restoring steam to prominence: Gentlemanly Likens:    – first chopped down a sapling growing between cab and tender.    – resisted temptation in fabricating a false, period headlamp.    – re-ringed bronzed up pistons.    – hung an old Clinchfield 2-8-2 bell in No. 1’s bracket.    – refurbished crosshead guides.    – added lubricator pads for engine truck brasses.    – reworked smokebox and stack.    – installed new and larger, pinched-end tubes.    – sawed a bridge timber into a new pilot beam.    – cut in more bridge wood for tender underframing.    – fashioned new pump rings.


Excerpt from The Clinchfield No. 1: Tennessee’s Legendary Steam Engine

– relagged boiler and applied jacket sheeting iron located in Chicago.    – replaced injectors.    – smoothed up blind drivers.    – and found other tires along with staybolts in good order.    In a press release distributed many years later by the Family Lines System, the railroad recounted how the rebuild was initially fraught with problems: “Few, if any, manufacturers stocked parts for old steam locomotives, so Likens and his shop forces improvised…Gauges and other cab appliances were bought new or found in operating condition elsewhere. Lack of a lubricator almost ended the project, until Likens located one in a Marion, North Carolina, machine shop. The owner traded it for a locomotive ride!”    The best description of the project was recalled in The Story of Little No. 1, in which Likens’s task is likened to a “challenging game.” It continues: Draftsmen and machinists spent many days turning out drawings, blue prints and patterns. Shopmen quickly warmed to the task and generated a special pride in restoring the little ten-wheeler to regular service…Carpenters made wooden parts from bridge timbers. Sheet metal craftsmen rolled and forged new creations. A Chicago fabricator provided boiler jacketing. A new number plate was re-tooled from an old steam locomotive part someone found lying around. Shopmen turned and re-grooved piston heads. Airactuated sanders replaced the original hand models. All appliances and gauges in the cab had to be bought new or found in operating condition elsewhere.    Karl Thomas drew up the plans to rebuild the engine’s wooden cab. In a 2014 interview, the eighty-five-year-old retired carman said, “I came in to work one morning, and Mr. Likens was sitting in the office. He called me in and said, ‘Tomorrow morning when you come in, I want you to bring your drawing equipment.’ And I said, ‘For what?’ Well, he told me, ‘We’re going to rebuild the No. 1, and I want you to draw a set of plans for the cab.’”    For the next three days, Thomas, who had been employed by the railroad since March 23, 1950, worked on the plans, which he described as not being “very detailed” but more of a “rough drawing of the cab’s size.” He had taken some drafting classes in hopes of being an architect before opting instead for a railroad career, and Likens knew this, which Thomas guessed is why he was


Once inside the shops, the No. 1 became a shell of its former self as nearly four dozen workers began rebuilding the steam engine. Courtesy of the Nancy Moore Pearson Collection.

assigned to draw the new cab’s specifications. “The wood was fairly rotten on the cab before we set out to rebuild it,” he said. He continues: It was in really bad shape. And beyond the cab, the smoke stack was cracked all the way from the top to the bottom. On the rebuilding, I started working on the coal tender’s underframe. I remember the center of the tender was made from a bridge timber. It was originally made from wood, but all we could find to rework was a twelve-byfourteen bridge timber. More or less, we had to figure things out like that. The pilot beam—the part that goes across the front and attaches to the cow-catcher—on the engine was also a piece of bridge timber. I remember Willard Shelton and T.J. Runion cut it with a cross-cut saw. I think some of the old-timers volunteered, but the wood part was all done by the carmen on the clock.    And according to a March 1973 Trains magazine article, “the headlight and dynamo were overhauled,” and a new number plate for the smokebox was tooled from a piece of brass taken from a retired steam E-class Challenger.    George Hatcher, the No. 1’s famous fireman, said many Clinchfield workers did, in fact, volunteer during the remodel. Like the North Carolina machine


Excerpt from The Clinchfield No. 1: Tennessee’s Legendary Steam Engine

Herbert Phillips and Roscoe Higgins peer over the No. 1’s wheels, temporarily removed from underneath its body, which hangs above Raymond Morris and R. Peterson. Courtesy of the Nancy Moore Peterson Collection.


John Jones, who served as the rebuilding project’s boilermaker, rolls the Clinchfield No. 1’s newly installed flues. Courtesy of the Nancy Moore Pearson Collection.

shop owner who provided the needed lubricator, the volunteers (and those on payroll, too) were promised a trip back in time behind the steam locomotive once it was back on the rails. “T.D. Moore told them if they would come down and work, he’d give them a ride to Elkhorn, Kentucky. And they did, and he kept his word,” Hatcher said. Those men would have done it a dozen times to get to do that…The people who worked on rebuilding the No. 1, it was personal to those men. They’d come down on their day off and work…for nothing… They had a lot of pride for the steam engine, and the No. 1 gave those men something to be proud of. It couldn’t have been done if they didn’t do it. They did it for love of the railroad.


Interview with the authors

Q&A

with

Mark A. Stevens & A.J. “Alf” Peoples authors of The Clinchfield No. 1: Tennessee’s Legendary Steam Engine

Where did the idea for the book come from? Alf: It goes back several years, really. Mark and I first talked about doing a book on the No. 1 in 2010, when Mark was publisher of the Erwin Record in Tennessee. Last year, we put together a pictorial history book titled The One & Only: A Pictorial History of the Clinchfield No. 1. Truthfully, we were surprised by how enthusiastic readers were. It was nice limited-edition book with about five hundred photos, but we quickly discovered readers wanted more. Mark: Pulling together photos from throughout the No. 1’s long history for The One & Only gave us a good foundation to begin a truly definitive narrative for The History Press, but I was surprised by how much we began to uncover when we really started digging deep into the locomotive’s history. It’s not just a history book about a steam engine, though. I look at it as telling the stories behind the story of the No. 1. It’s a book about people – men with a vision, men on a mission, men with a fierce loyalty for the railroad.

Can you give us a quick overview of the Clinchfield No. 1’s history? Alf: The engine was built in Logansport, Indiana, in 1882 for the Columbus, Chicago & Indiana Central Railway. It was numbered 423—not No. 1. That came many years later. It had a lot of different owners in its early years and didn’t make it to Tennessee until the early 1900s. From 1913 until the mid-1950s, the engine worked as the Black Mountain No. 1 in North Carolina. The Black Mountain Railroad was a subsidiary of the Clinchfield Railroad, and the engine was serviced all those years in Erwin, Tennessee, at the Clinchfield’s headquarters. So even before it took on the name of the Clinchfield No. 1, the engine was closely connected to the Clinchfield. Mark: The engine’s first brush with fame came in its seventh year when it pulled the first relief train to reach the victims of the Johnstown, Pennsylvania flood. But most of the engine’s days were spent working hard on the railroad. In 1968, though, something remarkable happened—and fame came quickly.


So it sounds like the train was well known far beyond Tennessee? Alf: Oh, my, yes. The No. 1 traveled far beyond Tennessee—down to Tampa, Florida, and back through Alabama and Georgia. The excursion routinely traveled to Kentucky from Spartanburg, South Carolina, so it’s certainly not limited to Tennessee. Mark: It’s “Tennessee’s Legendary Steam Engine” because the Clinchfield Railroad was based in Erwin, Tennessee, but yes, the fame of the No. 1 was far and wide back in the day.

What made this little engine famous? Mark: Well, this is what makes the story of the Clinchfield No. 1’s so interesting. The No. 1 wasn’t famous until steam engines were really a thing of the past. In the 1950s, the town of Erwin, Tennessee, home of the Clinchfield Railroad, bought the engine for $700 from the Black Mountain with the idea of putting it on display in a public park – sort of a shrine to the town’s railroad history. Well, those plans never materialized, and the engine began to rust and rot in the Erwin rail yard. Thomas D. Moore became the general manager of the Clinchfield Railroad in 1968, and he found this old engine in terrible shape on railroad property. Luckily, his first thought wasn’t to have it scrapped; rather, he ordered it to be rebuilt. He wanted to use it as a public relations tool and have it pull excursions. That’s the start of how the engine became famous. Alf: And the No. 1 was rebuilt by about four dozen Clinchfield Railroaders in only two months, so there’s this story of hard work and ingenuity and accomplishment. Those men did something incredible.

How did the two of you become interested in the Clinchfield No. 1? Mark: I just developed this fascination with it over the years when I lived in Erwin, Tennessee, and worked as the publisher of the newspaper there. I guess you can say I’m a railroad fan, but Alf, now, he’s got a real connection. Alf: My first job on the railroad was as a car marshal for the No. 1’s excursion trains. That’s where my forty-five-year career as a railroader started. I just recently retired as a locomotive engineer. I worked all my career on the same tracks the No. 1 traveled, and it was the No. 1 where I got my start. Mark: So his story is so much better than mine. As a lot of boys did back in the day, I wanted to be a train engineer when I grew up. But I became a newspaperman. Alf, though, he grew up to fulfill that boyhood dream of riding the rails.


Interview with the authors

Do you think Moore anticipated the No. 1 would become such an endearing part of railroad history? Alf: I doubt it. Originally, I believe he thought it could be used a few times for publicity purposes, but it turned into a huge part of the Clinchfield Railroad’s business almost immediately. The public loved the idea of taking rides behind an antique steam engine through the mountains of Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina. Once Moore realized what he had created, he really let his vision gather steam. Mark: Pun intended, right? Alf: Absolutely! Tens of thousands of passengers rode the No. 1’s excursions between 1968 and 1979. Had the railroad not moved in a more corporate direction under the Family Lines, I think the excursions would have kept going for many more years.

You said thousands rode the excursions. Anyone famous? Alf: Oh, yes. Roy Acuff, the famous country music star, rode the train. There’s a photo of him aboard the train in the book. U.S. senator Howard Baker Jr., who just recently passed away, used the train for two statewide whistle-stop tours across Tennessee in 1972 and 1978. Baker had become famous during Watergate as the man who asked, “What did the president know and when did he know it?” So he was well known worldwide, and when he decided to use the No. 1 to pull his campaign train, he got a lot of media attention. On his train was Lamar Alexander, who would become governor of Tennessee and is now himself a U.S. senator. Also aboard was Fred Thompson, a well-known actor who became a U.S. senator from Tennessee. Interestingly enough, Baker, Alexander and Thompson all ran for president. Mark: And two men who rode the No. 1 excursions became governor. Like Alf said, Lamar Alexander was elected governor of Tennessee, and Richard Riley, who rode in 1978, became governor of South Carolina. The politics get even more interesting, too – both Alexander and Riley both served as U.S. secretary of education. I think riding behind an antique steam engine was good for political careers.

How did you go about researching for the book? Mark: Well, we had a lot of history gathered up already – details about the engine, dates, names, etc., but I have to say the book could not have been done quite as well had it not been for East Tennessee State University’s Archives of Appalachia in Johnson City, Tennessee. It was a treasure-trove of information—boxes and boxes


of railroad paperwork about the Clinchfield No. 1. Somehow, thank goodness, it was preserved. We had access to letters from passengers, memos from railroad officials, financial records – everything you need. The information we found there really gave the book the color of life. Alf: And then we were able to interview some of the men who worked on the train—people like George Hatcher, who served as the No. 1’s fireman from 1968 until 1979. He’s ninety-four years old now, and he’s as sharp as a tack. He and his brother, who was the No. 1’s engineer, become almost as famous as the Clinchfield No. 1. The media loved them. Mark: And that’s the other great thing about researching the history of the No. 1. There were so many stories written in newspapers and magazines all over the country about the No. 1. The New York Times wrote three stories over the years about the excursion trains and the No. 1. Southern Living magazine featured the No. 1 in its pages. Sandlapper magazine in South Carolina did a cover story on the No. 1 and General Manager Moore, who was a South Carolina native. We had vast amounts of information already written down. Our job, our hard job, was reducing it all into an entertaining volume, but I think we managed it very well.

So you’re happy with the book? Mark: Absolutely. There are a lot of interesting stories in it that I don’t think very many people know. Some of them are funny, some are odd, some are heartwarming. It’s a fun read, and I don’t think you have to be a railroad buff or even a history buff to enjoy the book. That’s the great thing about books like this—the stories go beyond the topic. I think most people can relate to the stories here. Alf: People will love this book. It’s an American success story.

Can people still ride behind the Clinchfield No. 1 today? Alf: No, unfortunately, the old girl was retired in 1979. Mark: The engine is now part of the vast collection at the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. The engine is part of the roundhouse collection, and visitors can actually go aboard the No. 1. I would encourage anyone to go there for a visit.


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he History Press brings a new way of thinking to history publishing—preserving and enriching community by empowering history enthusiasts to write local stories for local audiences. Our books are useful resources for research and preservation, but it is their value as touchstones for community identity that drives us to publish works that national houses and university presses too often have ignored. Infused with local color, our books are highly readable, often brief and aimed at a general readership.

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