The Little Engine that Will

At a time when many people are attempting to put new things on top of Mill Mountain, the Museum of Transportation has brought some- thing back down the mountain.

The Zoo Choo will become the new Choo. The little train that could ... and did, transporting children and adults around Mill Mountain Zoo for more than half a century, will soon roll on the mini-main line of the museum rail yard.

Painted in the burnt tuscan red of the N&W Railroad, the current Zoo Choo includes a gas-powered Model G-16 miniature train engine, two passenger cars and an observation car. The train's relocation is a joint effort of VMT and the Jaycees, who will split revenue from its operation.

The new train will help VMT meet two of its goals for improving its operations: more interactive exhibits and more features geared to children. It should be fascinating to see the tiny train snaking its way among the unmoving giants of yesterday’s locomotives and rolling stock while modern trains rumble along the tracks a pebble’s throw away.

A number of details still need to be worked out. One of them is trackage rights. Even a diminuitive train needs room to turn, and one end of the rail yard does not have quite enough of it. Norfolk Southern and the museum are working together to resolve the problem, which could involve NS granting a few feet of right-of-way for the track. Sounds like real railroading, doesn’t it?

And as with any new rail line, there is the matter of a name. What should we call the transplanted train? Zoo Choo no longer fits. Do you have suggestions? Then please let us know.

Meanwhile we will continue to dream of the day when VMT can offer short excursions on a lifesized train. Start thinking—we will need a name for that one also.

Und hat ein blümlein bracht

This week, we happily welcomed back Mr. Wick Moorman, Chairman of Norfolk Southern. Mr. Moorman once again toured the museum and had what our Executive Director called, "the most productive meeting with a Norfolk Southern official this museum has ever had."

While we can't give out any details of the meeting, I will give a hint of one of the topics discussed. We may be on our way to making a trade for a certain locomotive that's been away from home for far too long.

That's all I can give for now.

Meanwhile, the Zoo Choo is finally here. It made the trip down from the mountain uneventfully and sits on our back dock to be protected from the elements. The next step is to lay the track for the train, a project we hope to have underway early in the new year. With a little luck and a lot of work, we'll have it operational for the tourist season next year.

#1218 is coming along in the way of its exhibitions. It will open for the Christmas Eve sneak preview, though most of its signage won't be in place until the New Year's Eve sneak preview. We hope to have all of its major controls labeled, a light installed in the cab (for better visibility), and a narrative detailing the contributions of the engine and the other Class As during World War II.

Lastly, we have opened our President One and Safety Instruction Cars for public viewing. The President One car was the personal car of the President of the Illinois Terminal Railroad. While its restoration is ongoing, we have opened the living room, a bedroom, and the dining room for display. The kitchen and other bedrooms are not currently open as they still need some work, but there's still plenty to see. The Safety Instruction Car features a 48-seat movie theater (for showing safety films) and an apartment in which the full-time safety instructor would live while on the rails. We have some of the old safety films in our archives, and we hope to have a few running in the theater next year.

We'll be closed on Christmas Day and on New Year's Day, but we are otherwise open for all comers. Come by and see us during your holiday week.

Ding, Ding, Ding Went the Bell

DC Transit #1470 has not moved under its own power in more than forty years. Given that it drew its power from overhead wires and a trolley pole, this isn't terribly surprising. In 1985, the Roanoke River overflowed its banks in what the area still infamously remembers as "The Flood of `85."* Directly alongside that river was the Virginia Museum of Transportation, located then in Roanoke's Wasena Park. #1470 was likely completely submerged. The water level rose as high as the rafters of the old museum building, and the trolley certainly wasn't that tall, so we're making the inference. We don't know for sure. In any event, the wheels were underwater for days. Now we skip ahead 22 years as we try to move DC Transit #1470 again.

The idea was simple -- we would pick up the street car, pull out the rails, and set it back down on the other set of rails underneath. If we had actually done this, we might have been alright. However, with the Zoo Choo desperate for space given its rather commodious turning radius, we opted to move #1470 a little more to the east to give the train some clearance. This was the rub.

We're estimating the weight of our street car to be in the neighborhood of 30,000 pounds. While that was within the lifting capacity of Allegheny Construction's big crane, it was not within its capacity due to the angle by which the crane was forced to operate (there are some messy physics involved that I won't bother going into). So the new plan was to lift the front end of the trolley with the crane, and pull it forward using a large tow truck (services generously donated by the Commonwealth Coach & Trolley Museum) until it had cleared its upper rails and the front wheels could be set down on the lower rails. This part went [relatively] smoothly. Now we get to the ugly part.

Next we would lift the rear end of the trolley, and drag the whole thing forward some more with the wrecker until those rear wheels cleared the upper rails to be set down level with the rest of the car. Remember how I told you that those wheels had been underwater for days? Well, it seems they never got cleaned up, and the wheels that carried that street car from Alexandria to Glen Echo every day for years refused to let it move the first foot forward today.

Enter: The Tow Truck

By this point, our one-hour moving project had already ballooned up to the three-hour mark. It was decided that a fair lead could be rigged (since the tow truck couldn't maneuver in the tight space to be directly in front of the trolley) to the side of the tow truck, beneath the crane, in front of the street car. The resultant system of pulleys more closely resembled a Rube Goldberg device than a wench.

Picture this: the tow truck sits to the right and about a car length forward of the trolley. The line comes from the tow truck, immediately out to the left (toward the street car), through a pulley fastened by a chain to the rails themselves, to the front of #1470. We created a Tetris piece out of steel cable. Now to engage the wench, pull the trolley forward, and set its rear-end down.

At this time, I'd like to let you know about a new exhibit at your Virginia Museum of Transportation. This museum is now home to the only combination narrow gauge-standard gauge rails on earth.

Rather than pull the trolley forward, the force of the wench and the resistance of the street car joined to bend the steel rails in toward each other, pigeon-toe style. Time for another new plan.

The distance the car needed to move forward was only about three feet. It had been pulled the rest of the way earlier with its front wheels in the air. The daredevils with Allegheny Construction lowered the rear end of the trolley onto blocks they'd put on the lower rails, forward of the upper rails. Then it was just a matter of shoving the upper rail segment out of the way, pulling the blocks out from under the street car, and lowering it finally down to the earth.

And so it was. After five hours, our street car had moved twenty feet forward, and two feet straight down. In the process, we rendered useless a pair of steel rails, dug massive holes in our playground from the tow truck's path, and cost Allegheny Construction about twenty man-hours in donated time and services.

Why settle for the easy way, when the very hard, destructive way will do?

*Every small community refers to natural disasters in this way. It's quaint, which is another way of saying that no one understands it, but it seems charming, anyway.

And we're back

After too long, we're back and better than ever, coming in over your FM dial. That last part's not right, but we're back nonetheless, so let's get you caught up on some recent events at your Virginia Museum of Transportation.

On October 27th, we hosted our first annual Iron Horse Tug of War, a joint fund raiser with Special Olympics Virginia. We were fortunate for some fantastic weather, coming off three consecutive days of rain. Six teams competed in the event, pulling our #611 in heats. We very nearly killed the first team. Despite tugging with all they had, they weren't able to budge the engine an inch. After some investigation, we discovered that one of the tender brakes failed to disengage, so the team was pulling a 800,000 pounds of steel with its brakes on -- ouch. After releasing the brake, we had no difficulties at all, and #611 rolled back and forth easily. Below are some photos from the event, taken by Mr. Martin Moorefield.

We had not seen these blue skies since early this week. We were glad to have them for the event.













Local band Key West played for us through the event.














The competitors and spectators line up as the final preparations are made.














Teams pose for pictures after the awards are given out. Awards were given for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place teams, as well as the last place team which earned the "Caboose Who Got Loose" award. Our thanks go out to Creations in downtown Roanoke for helping us with the awards plaques.








Just two weeks later, we hosted a lecture and book signing by Rush Loving, Jr., author of The Men Who Loved Trains. This event was the first in a series of collaborative efforts involving the N&W Historical Society, the C&O Historical Society, the Blue Ridge and Roanoke Chapters of the NRHS, the O. Winston Link Museum, and of course, your Virginia Museum of Transportation. Attendance was, admittedly, light. Despite the small crowd, Mr. Loving fielded excellent questions, and took a tour of the museum after signing copies of his book. We thank him for his time, and hope to have him back soon.

In other news, the first step in bringing the Zoo Choo to VMT is underway. Next week, we hope to receive the track upon which the train will run. Because the Mill Mountain Zoo will be replacing its train, they opted to keep their track in place, and simply purchase a new train. Their old train comes to us, along with brand new track that we'll lay down in our rail yard outside. We'll be renovating the Ellett Station, and old combination freight-passenger station formerly used on the Virginian Railway, as our ticket office. Check back for more information on this in the coming weeks.

There's one last topic brewing that needs to be addressed, but this isn't the right post for it. Look for another post soon on a more serious subject. I'll give you a hint -- it starts with "M," rhymes with "honey," and is synonymous with "somethin' we ain't got."

To attempt to describe the railroad's presence and influence in the city of Roanoke over the years is to attempt to describe a rainbow to a blind man. Roanoke still bears the marks of its illustrious rail heritage, much as an older man may still show some pocks from his pimpled youth.

A quick look around town will confirm this. Consider The Great 611 Steak Company*, a local restaurant adorned in the colors and images of Norfolk & Western's own #611. The Norfolk Southern shops still dominate the city skyline on the other side of I-581. There are dozens of bridges and overpasses for trains. Shaffer's Crossing is the largest rail yard in Virginia west of Richmond. Some of the most popular events in the town's history have been when locomotives came into or left this museum, much like the fanfare that accompanied their births at the shops down the street.

One other rail tribute lives in Roanoke. Actually, it lives above Roanoke at the Mill Mountain Zoo. The Zoo Choo, a miniature train, has operated at the zoo for more than half a century, happily transporting visitors around the zoo whilst bombarding them with views of the valley that are truly unmatched. The Zoo Choo is every bit an institution in Roanoke.

Last night, it was announced that the Zoo Choo is moving.

The train is owned by the Roanoke Jaycees, but has chugged along atop Mill Mountain for more than 50 years. The zoo asked the Jaycees to remove the train as they wished to purchase a train for themselves, no longer wishing to split the revenue from the Jaycees' engine. Looking for a new home, the Jaycees contacted us, and we said yes.

To place the train here requires a healthy bit of construction that we cannot guarantee to be completed for next year (the train will move out of the zoo in November of 2007). A track pattern resembling a dog bone will be placed outside in our rail yard. At several points, it will cross the tracks on which its larger cousins rest. These sections will be made removable so that we can move the pieces in our collection as needed. This means elevating the entirety of the mini-train's track and filling with ballast and wood.

One consideration is to relocate and repaint the old Ellitt station which sits outside the museum for use as the ticket booth. Another would be to purchase tickets inside at the front desk or gift shop, though the station idea is obviously preferable.

The Jaycees would operate the train, hiring all the engineers and maintenance workers. The terms of the financial agreement would be as they were with the Mill Mountain Zoo -- VMT and the Jaycees will split the net return.

This is a fitting home for the Zoo Choo. When the museum was located in Wasena Park, it operated a miniature train of its own. That train, however, was actually a tractor with a fiberglass shell over it, far from the sophistication of this entity. Moreover, the zoo will not be without a train forever. The zoo already has plans to purchase a train that it would own and operate itself, so the Zoo Choo will yet live.

One of the single most common requests at VMT from visitors is for a train ride. Since Norfolk Southern's main east-west line sits right behind the museum, this is nearly impossible. However, the Zoo Choo is an excellent compromise and will provide a fine base of operations for the next fifty years of its life, riding the rails in the shadows of the giants that inspired it.

*VMT collaborates with The Great 611 Steak Company. A receipt from the museum is good for 10% off your meal at the restaurant, and your meal receipt is good for 10% off admission to the museum.