SOUTHERN NO. 4501 RETURNS IN GREEN AND GOLD

Southern No. 4501 is back in green.

Following weather-related delays that pushed the project past its original May 9 target, the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum unveiled the newly painted 4501 over Memorial Day weekend. The locomotive will carry the classic Southern Railway passenger livery — green body, gold lettering — throughout the 2026 operating season.

The paint project was always an outdoor operation, which meant the Chattanooga spring weather had a say in the schedule. It didn’t cooperate. The delays, though frustrating, underscore something the museum has been working to address: TVRM currently completes all exterior finishing work outside, weather permitting. The museum is now raising funds to build a dedicated climate-controlled finishing shop adjacent to the main shop in East Chattanooga — a 40-by-100-foot facility estimated at $125,000 that would give crews a controlled environment to do this kind of work year-round.

For those less familiar with No. 4501’s history: she was built at the Baldwin Locomotive Works in October 1911, builder’s number 37085, as the first of 182 M-class Mikados in the Southern Railway fleet. A 2-8-2 by wheel arrangement, she started her career as a freight hauler across east Tennessee, central Kentucky, and eventually southern Indiana before finding her way to the Kentucky & Tennessee Railway in 1948. TVRM founders Robert Soule and Paul Merriman acquired her in 1961 for the fledgling museum, and she became the centerpiece of TVRM’s excursion program and the Southern Railway’s steam program for decades. Retired in 1998, she was returned to service between 2011 and 2014 as part of Norfolk Southern’s 21st Century Steam program before coming home to Chattanooga for good.

The green and gold livery she’s wearing now is the same passenger scheme she carried during the Southern Railway steam excursion years — a fitting look for a locomotive that’s been a part of this region’s railroad history for more than a century.

No. 4501 is operating on the Summerville Steam excursion schedule now. If you haven’t seen her in the new paint yet, come out to Grand Junction Depot and have a look.

To support the climate-controlled finishing shop campaign or learn more about how to contribute to TVRM’s preservation work, visit tvrail.com.