Chesapeake and Ohio 1309
Chesapeake & Ohio Railway 1309 is a steam locomotive built in 1949 for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) where it pulled coal trains until retirement in 1956. It was the last steam engine built by Baldwin Locomotive Works for the North American market. In 1976, it was moved to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum for static display. The engine was purchased in 2014 by the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad which began restoration with the intention of returning it to service as the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad 1309.
Fast Flying Virginian
The "FFV" was inaugurated on May 11, 1889, and ran until May 12, 1968. The train operated on a daily daytime schedule, being carried from Jersey City, NJ—Penn Station in Manhattan was years in the future—as a Pennsylvania Railroad train to Washington, D.C. (after 1908 to Washington Union Station) and, as a C&O train, from there to Cincinnati, OH (after 1933 calling at the Union Terminal). The train operated westbound as #3 and eastbound as #4. The train ran behind C&O locomotives beyond Washington, DC, first to Alexandria, VA over trackage rights from the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac to Alexandria, VA, there changing to tracks of the Southern Railway (now part of Norfolk Southern). In Orange, VA, C&O trains left Southern property to turn onto what is now a transfer track between Orange and Gordonsville, VA, but this track was originally part of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, which continued through Gordonsville on to Charlottesville. This segment of track became part of the C&O, as did the track through Gordonsville, which before becoming part of the C&O was the Virginia Central Railroad. Northeast of Orange, portions of the Orange and Alexandria railroad became part of the Southern; the present-day Norfolk Southern tracks between Orange and Charlottesville were built after the Civil War. When the "FFV" was new, the transfer track from Southern property at Orange joined the C&O main line from Newport News, VA at Gordonsville, and proceeded on them to Charlottesville. About a mile west of the C&O station in Charlottesville, the C&O tracks crossed the Southern line. The Southern station was, and is, a union station, with platforms for both main lines; a few C&O trains, but not seemingly the "FFV", stopped at both stations. From Charlottesville, the "FFV" continued west over the Blue Ridge Mountains and North Mountain to West Virginia, along the New River Gorge, and finally crossing the Ohio River into Ohio at Cincinnati. (The "Ohio" of "Chesapeake and Ohio" is the river, not the state.)