Reading’s big, home-built T-1 4-8-4s never looked so festive hauling Pennsylvania coal. But in 1977, steam entrepreneur Ross Rowland has decorated the 2101 in vermilion, yellow and blue for a summer-long series of excursions celebrating the 150th anniversary of Baltimore & Ohio, the nation’s first real railroad. Steam traditionalists are appalled, but on a fine May morning, no complaints are heard at Shenandoah Junction, West Virginia, as the engine with 18 cars hammers up the grade from the Potomac River at Harpers Ferry. In coming months the engine will make more than 40 trips over the Chessie System and more are planned for 1978. Before then the engine will be damaged in a Kentucky roundhouse fire, cosmetically restored, and retired to permanent display in Baltimore’s B&O Railroad Museum.
