The Legacy of BC&G 4
Throughout its career, No. 4 garnered the attention of fans throughout the eastern United States. Below are stories from those who worked on or were inspired by the locomotive.
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I personally knew two of the engineers on #4, one was Alvin Carte and Job Young. As a boy I would wait at the water tank in Swandale for #4 to stop for water, I would then talk to the Engineer. My Dad was Engineer on the log train, he ran Shay #12 and Shay # 19 as well as Climax # 3. I went to work for the Co. right out of High School, as a Hostler at Swandale, taking care of #12 and #19 and #3 at night. From 1956 through 1959. My Dad was Ted Burdette, after the Elk River Coal & Lumber Co shut down , Dad went to Cass as Shop Foreman and Engineer, I worked at Cass as a Fireman and extra Engineer.
Cody Burdette
I always loved steam locomotives, but it wasn't until I busted my butt, bruised my knuckles, and worked until I thought I would pass out from exhaustion that I really got to know steam first hand. It was an exhilarating experience---and such a great feeling of achievement when I learned how to keep the engine's pressure up no matter what the demands. I had some throttle time as well---and it was a real experience.
Ron Flanary
It was my first cab ride on a steam locomotive at North Carolina Transportation Museum in the early 90s. I always knew I liked steam locomotives but after a cab ride, I realized when I got older and wanted to work on them. Now I’ve worked on numerous locomotives across the country!
Zac McGinnis
BC&G 4 and Me
- Jim Wrinn
I think my first knowledge that a Buffalo Creek & Gauley 2-8-0 steam locomotive No. 4 existed was a photo of it on the Quakertown & Eastern tourist railroad in Pennsylvania that was published in Trains. Or it may have been in Ron Ziel’s much beloved and bitter-sweet book, The Twilight of Steam Locomotives. This would have been in the 1960s before I was 10 years old. Either way, I had an understanding that such a steam locomotive existed.
In the 1970s, I learned that No. 4 had relocated to the Old Dominion State. I remember reading a Ron Flanary story about 1973 or 1974 about moving the engine from storage in Andover, Va., to its new operating home on the Southwest Virginia Scenic Railroad in Hiltons, Va. The line showed up in the Steam Passenger Directory, the bible of operating tourist railroads back in those days. In 1975, I finally talked my parents into taking me to visit the Cass Scenic Railroad and we decided to stop at Hiltons and check out the Southwest Virginia Scenic. Sadly, it had already closed, a fact that was affirmed when one of the owner / investors, Gayle Bellamy, showed up and chatted up our family. I was disappointed but I had at least met No. 4 in person, finally. Little did I know how much time I would be spending with this locomotive in the future.
Fast forward to the 1980s, and I learn that No. 4 has made its way to my home state, North Carolina, and is under restoration at the N.C. Transportation Museum in Spencer. Not only do I learn this but I also get an invitation to join retired Southern Railway shop and operating employees who’d been working to put new life into the old locomotive. In June 1986, I visited the museum to see No. 4 shuttling around the shop complex, still lettered for Southwest Virginia. Later that year, I moved closer to the area, and in November, began volunteering on weekends to restore rolling stock, mostly coaches to go with No. 4.
The SR retirees decided that SWA or BC&G 4 wasn’t appropriate to them and redecorated the engine as Southern Railway No. 604. Later this jarring transformation would be muted with less emphasis on Southern. But still No. 4 went in disguise as No. 604 for the next 14 years. Over the years, the running gear would be rebuilt and the tender replaced. Boiler issues that had been with the engine for decades would be nursed along until they could no longer be repaired.
Over the next few years, I would be in and around No. 4 on good days and bad. I was there on days when she was the star of the show, the only positive thing going for a fledgling museum that seemed to be going nowhere fast. I was there when she put on a show for the shop complex’s centennial, for a visit by MTV when it auditioned for guest DJs (that was my smoke in the background of Carson Daily), and for and NRHS convention. I also was there on the day when she went down hard and suffered firebox damage. I would play a role in restoring her a second and almost a third time. I was there at night when we’d cut flues by the light of a diesel locomotive headlight. Eventually, I would get over my own lack of mechanical knowledge, qualify as a fireman, and stoke the fire on this legendary locomotive. I even got to fire the engine the day that Bill Purdie, the long-time master mechanic of steam for Southern Railway, came to visit and ran the engine. Bill was one of my heroes, and it was a priviledge and an honor to shovel coal and inject water for Bill. It may have not been one of the fastest or the longest runs, but it was still a run nevertheless.
Firing No. 4 was a challenge for an office rat like me. The back corners of the firebox were a stretch for me to reach, and I learned that using the engine’s draft was important to get fresh coal back there. I also learned that the engine liked a nice bank near the fire door. A day spent on No. 4 was a day filled with good exercise, fresh air, and the intoxicating scent of acrid coal smoke. It was wonderful.
The last time I saw No. 4 under steam was in November 2001. It was the Sunday morning conclusion to the first joint meeting of the Association of Railway Museums and the Tourist Railroad Association Inc (ARM and TRAIN). I was the chairman of the event, and after I had visited both board meetings to thank them for letting NCTM host, I headed to the museum. I was exhausted after a week of field trips, seminars, and meetings. There was an open day at Spencer and both No. 4 and Graham County Shay No. 1925 were moving around the site for the enjoyment of the participants. New Federal Railroad Administration rules for steam locomotives were going into effect. No. 4 would require significant work to return to steam.
After that we began a third restoration of No. 4 that would not be completed at Spencer as the scope and cost of the repairs seemed to widen and grow every time we got into the locomotive’s innards. No. 4 had seen a lot of hard service at the BC&G and during its years as a tourist hauler. No. 4 is a fine locomotive, and I hope to see it run again soon. In a few years, the 1926 Baldwin will turn 100. Now that it is back in its home state of West Virginia, it deserves to run once more. Let’s make it happen!
BC&G #4…In My Basement
- Brooks Stover
At about age 30 my interest in model railroading, born in my youth with American Flyer S scale trains, was rekindled. Having been inspired by model railroads I’d seen in magazines, I knew I wanted to build a model railroad based on a prototype. But which one? At this same time, my brother Nelson, with whom I’d built American Flyer layouts as a kid, was living in Widen, WV doing community service work. He began sending me material he was finding about the railroad that had served Widen’s Rich Run Coal. That railroad was, of course, the Buffalo Creek & Gauley. I was hooked.
The BC&G was an obvious choice as the prototype to model. It was short, just 18.6 miles long but very scenic, and had three handsome Consolidations which I determined I could model by modifying American Flyer 0-8-0 switchers. Many photos of the BC&G engines showed them with wide sidewalls on their drivers when they were ‘cleaned up’ for fan trips and the AF engines had the same white drivers. The model I built of #4, and BC&G’s other two Consolidations, were a bit crude due to my fledgling modeling skills, but they looked good me! I had BC&G #4 running in my basement!
My chance to meet #4 in person came in 1995. The engine was in tourist service at the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer, NC. Behind the leadership of Jim Wrinn, on the first weekend in November that year the museum lettered the engine in her BC&G livery and hosted a BC&G Reunion weekend. It celebrated the 30th anniversary of her final run on the BC&G in February 1965. I not only photographed my model of #4 on the full-sized engine’s running board but got to ride in the cab while she circled the museum grounds and did some switching late into the evening. The museum shop had cast four replicas of the #4 number plate in brass. The one that was on the engine while I rode in the cab is now on display in my layout room.
In 2005, a company introduced an S scale Consolidation based on the B&O E-27 Consolidation, a much more highly detailed model than my AF-based version. I replaced all three of the BC&G engines on my layout with versions of this new model, including a new and much more accurate model of #4. That engine has been in continuous service on my layout ever since. A photograph of my model of #4 crossing the Sand Fork Bridge on my layout appeared on the cover of Model Railroading Magazine in November 2020. I suspect I’m one of the few people in the world who has BC&G #4 in their basement.
To view more of Brooks modeling and to learn about the Buffalo Creek & Gauley visit:
