Sometimes you can go home again

Thomas Wolfe’s admonition that “you can’t go home again” is an often-used expression. Most of us know exactly what Wolfe meant.

But on May 30, thousands of individuals, myself included, found that on some rare occasions one can go home again. For one weekend and hopefully for many weekends to follow, it seemed like time was suspended and the clock had gone back 60 years to the mid-1950s.

The setting was Roanoke, Virginia. Crowds gathered in the O. Winston Link museum area and awaited the return of a special steam locomotive, the Norfolk and Western’s famed streamlined passenger engine, J-Class number 611. For the first time since 1994, she came “under steam” into the city of her 1950 birth.

Wolfe, who wrote eloquently about steam locomotives, would have enjoyed this story. 611 had just made the journey from his beloved North Carolina and had crossed the Blue Ridge Mountains minutes before her late afternoon arrival on Norfolk Southern tracks adjacent to the Link Museum.

She slowly approached the crowd with her whistle blowing, the smoke billowing from her stack, and, adding a couple of wheel slips for dramatic effect, she eased to a stop in front of cheering and admiring fans. Her Roanoke arrival would have been a routine occurrence 60 years earlier, but far from routine on this occasion.

The fact that the 611 was even running on her own power was essentially miraculous. She’s now called “The Spirit of Roanoke,” but she could well have been named the “Phoenix of Roanoke.”

With fanfare she made her “final run” in October 1959 and was retired to a museum and expected to never run again. In 1982 she returned to service and ran for 12 more years. Fate intervened and she was consigned to retirement once again and made her second “final run” in December 1994.

I was a lucky guy, for in 1959 I managed, at the last minute, to obtain a ride in the fireman’s seat on the “final run” between Roanoke and Bluefield, West Virginia.

In 1994 (“final run” number two) I didn’t ride the engine, but did the next best thing, I was able to ride in the tool car, immediately behind the locomotive and tender. (I did spend some time visiting the engine cab during a Chattanooga, Tennessee, servicing).

My 2015 going home again experience did not end with the train’s arrival. The “time warp” continued. I had a trackside-facing room in the historic Hotel Roanoke — just like in 1955 — and I could easily view the 611 after returning to my well-situated room.

611 put on a switching maneuver show that I watched for 40 minutes. Later I listened to Norfolk Southern freights (diesel powered) all through the night. I also returned to Regency and Pine rooms of hotel, among my favorite dining spots.

I even got back to the iconic Texas Tavern, a “hole in the wall” eating spot that I frequently visited during my 1957-59 Roanoke residency. Same building, same 10 counter stools, and same menu as 55 years previously. Yep. I’d truly gone home again for sure.

Dennis Quillen (Ph.D.) is a retired economic geography professor. Email: grahamco1925@gmail.com.