Jim Shaughnessey draws a word portrait of Gardner A Caverly's reaction to a chance encounter with one of these engines in 1955. He saw the locomotive "struggling upgrade with northbound tonnage. The ground trembled, the setting sun was darkened with rising black smoke, and the white hot fire gleamed through the ashpan doors. He listened to the thunderous exhause and the wail of her whistle echoing and re-echoing through the pine-clad hills."

Stirring stuff, and it affected Caverly: "Never before had he been so deeply moved by the power and glory of steam. It was a subject fit for an artist, but Michelangelo himself could not have recorded the emotion that overwhelmed him"

But here's the punch line: "He was nearly brought to tears as the engineer waved for it was only the week before that he had signed the engine's death warrant."