(The following article by Chip Jones appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch on June 6.)
RICHMOND — CSX Corp. has sent another piece of its past packing.
A working model of one of the last steam engines to roll through Richmond was carefully removed from the railroad company’s downtown offices yesterday.
The toy train is bound for the Science Museum of Virginia where, in the building’s past life, it once resided.
“It’s a beautiful model of an original steam engine that brought trains through Broad Street Station from 1945 to 1954,” museum director Dr. Walter R.T. Witschey said.
The 6-foot-long model train once was displayed at Broad Street Station but was moved after the station closed in 1975.
The facility reopened in 1976 as the Science Museum.
In the 1950s, the model train’s owner, Harry Wren, ran it in his back yard in Richmond for the amusement of his children, according to “One Hundred and Fifty Years of History: Along the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad” by William E. Griffin Jr.
The model has been in a plastic case in the CSX lobby at One James Center for at least a decade. Early this year, the railroad corporation moved its headquarters to Florida, and the local offices are expected to close by the end of the summer.
“We thought it was very important to keep this important railroad artifact in the community,” said Robert W. Shinn, the last remaining CSX vice president in Richmond.
The classic model has a black and gray locomotive that pulls a coal tender. The tender has “Capital Cities Route” etched in gold letters on its side, above “Richmond” and “Washington.”
The actual Carter Braxton No. 622 locomotive was part of the RF&P’s Statesmen series of engines. Carter Braxton signed the Declaration of Independence and was a member of the Continental Congress from Virginia.
The locomotive was acquired by the RF&P in April 1945 and retired in December 1954.