The clanging of train station bells is a sound engrained in Americana, serving as the musical score when long locomotives pulled into town. But at the Tennessee Central Railway Museum, they herald a different kind of arrival — the resurrection of a piece of steam history.
The Nashville Chattanooga and St. Louis 576 locomotive was built in 1942, just in time to serve a crucial role during World War II. It connected Nashville and Chattanooga to Atlanta, as well as Nashville with Memphis.
“It, along with her sisters, pulled special troop and supply trains all over the Southeast,” said Joey Bryan, vice president of the Nashville Steam Preservation Society. “It hauled people and supplies over a million miles throughout its 10-year service lifespan.”
After it was retired, the 576 found a new home in Centennial Park starting in 1953. In the more than six decades it occupied the space, it became an attraction for burgeoning and veteran ferroequinologists alike.
The locomotive also caught the eye of the entertainment industry, like the Life magazine cover in 1969 featuring Johnny Cash next to its wheels .
“It’s really incredible to think that thousands of people had a picture of 576 just sitting there on their coffee table alongside Johnny Cash,” Bryan said.
Nashville Steam has spent the past decade raising more than $4 million to breathe life back into the last-of-its-kind locomotive.
Bryan’s great-grandfather worked for the railroad, and he said he remembers crawling around on the 576 in the park as a child. His desire to restore it started in 2003 at an open house where he first sat in its cab.
“Sitting there on the engineer’s seat and my hand on the throttle, that was the first time I really envisioned what it could be,” he said. “And that idea never left my mind.”
In the middle of his answer, he paused to look over and smile at children pulling a train whistle. He said when people see a steam engine that isn’t operational, they’re only experiencing a fraction of its story.
“It’s really those sounds,” he said. “It’s the steam, it’s the temperature, it’s the rhythm of all the appliances that are working on it that really kind of dig into the mind and really opens up the interest and the passion for them.”
‘Voice of the locomotive’
To recreate the sonic magic of the 576’s whistle, Alex Mullins spent six months building it with video game software and a flight simulator throttle.
“Whenever you pull on the whistle, it changes the throttle position, which goes into the video game code and changes several variables to kind of add a little bit of steam hiss at the beginning, and then lead into the deeper tones as you really pull into the whistle,” said Mullins, a technical coordinator and photographer with Nashville Steam. “And I think it is the most accurate whistle simulator anyone’s ever made digitally.”
Mullins, who’s from Nashville, said trains have a certain stage presence that draws people in, and sound is a key factor.
“The whistle is the voice of the locomotive,” he said. “So many locomotives have different sounds, and this one is particularly this locomotive from Nashville. And it’s really cool to hear the sound of Nashville steam kind of echoing through the hills. It gave me chills when I first got this thing working.”
When asked what goes through his head when he hears the whistle, Ronald Dunn responded simply: “My whole life.”
Dunn spent his career in television and radio, but he’s also a card-carrying locomotive engineer who works with Nashville Steam. Put simply, he calls himself a “train nut.” And like many others here, that passion started in his youth.
“Well, I was 6 years old when I got into this particular locomotive, the 576,” he said. “My sister and I got in the cab back when it was in the park. And we went nuts. I went nuts. I went crazy. This is kind of like a full circle of my life. I’m 75 now, and I still hope to be around when we get this thing rolling.”
Near the whistle, new core memories are being made. Like 6-year-old Jack, whose grandfather is part of the restoration team.
Jack said he’d like to work on the railroad one day, too, maybe as an engineer.
“I like their sounds,” he said.
His 4-year-old sister Lucy shared in the excitement talking about the whistle and the big 576 behind them.
“I just like them because when I pull it or when someone else pulls it and I hear it, it just sounds like it’s a real train,” she said. “I like how the pipes are so big, and I like how the wheels are just enormous.”
‘A living, breathing animal’
As visitors ogled the steam engine at a recent open house event, another kind of noise catches attention: an Old West shootout show.
Chris Brandenburg performs with the Dead Tree Desperados, a posse of outlaws and lawmen that reenact train robberies on excursions to Watertown.
Part of his inspiration came from watching shows like Gunsmoke and Bonanza as a child.
“You might have had your own cowboy hat and some cap guns, and you played along,” Brandenburg said. “That sticks with you. That sticks with you until you grow up. And then one day, somebody says, ‘Hey, would you like the opportunity to dress up like a cowboy and rob a train?’ and think to yourself, ‘Would I? I sure would.'”
Once the 576 is fully operational in about 12 to 18 months, it’ll be the first steam engine they’ll get to plunder.
“The thing about a steam engine is it’s like a living, breathing animal,” Brandenburg said. “It fills up, it expands, it contracts. It breathes, it makes noise. And it’s just a sight to behold.”
The locomotive’s aesthetic will harken back to a different era. And that history is what it’s all about. Each generation that connects with the 576 becomes a link in preserving the story of bygone times.
Bryan, with Nashville Steam, said making sure those memories don’t fade is even more important in a city that’s evolving as rapidly as Nashville.
“Frankly, the industrial transportation side of the city’s history is just really forgotten,” he said. “Back in the day, the NC&StL was the largest employer in the city, so everyone pretty much had a connection or knew someone that worked for the railroad. So now, with it changing so much, we just want to bring that story to light.”
Right now, Bryan said the locomotive “runs on money,” not coal, so they plan to fundraise for further testing of the 576. The team hopes to start steam and operating tests by the end of the year, with the goal of launching excursions next year.
This story was produced by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, a collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting, WPLN and WUOT in Tennessee, LPM, WEKU, WKMS and WKU Public Radio in Kentucky, and NPR. Sign up for the weekly Porch light newsletter here for news from around the region.
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