Dean -

To answer your question, yes, that is an ex-Wabash caboose (WAB #2826).

Les

If I remember right, Pete Claussen is the owner of the Gulf & Ohio Railroad System, headquartered in Knoxville. I don't think the engine is in Knoxville, I took a good look at everything in the K&HR/G&O shop area and yard and didn't see it. Maybe perhaps he traded the locomotive for the Washington & Lincolnton 2-8-0 he has now. I think, I remember hearing it used to be in Mississippi somewhere.

Not sure of the time of the movement, but by 2007 it appears that Vulcan 0-4-0T (b/n-2882) is displayed at the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, VA on Tredgar St. The site is now the location of a museum called The American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar, and is listed in the US National Register of Historic Places. Around the time of the Civil War, the Tredegar Iron Works produced about 70 steam locomotives.

http://www.usa-civil-war.com/Tredegar/tredegar_vst.html

Bob Albertson

Bob, I was at Tredegar last February and I don't remember seeing a locomotive anywhere on the grounds. Even without a locomotive, Tredegar is a great place to visit. It is an excellent and well balanced Civil War museum, and a very good compliment to the "Museum of the Confederacy" a few blocks away.

Ironic twist here.. Wasn't kudzu originally brought to the South by the railroads with the intention of using it to control lineside vegetation?

Dave Crosby

Maybe kudzu is the answer to our dependency on foreign oil. If it grows that fast, maybe it can harvested and used as fuel!

Later!
Mr. Ed

According to a back issue of Mother Earth news:

"In 1920 John Rigdon, pioneer conservationist from Columbus, Georgia and agricultural agent for the Central of Georgia Railroad, learned of kudzu's remarkable growing speed and excellent nutritional value. He convinced the railroad that the prolific plant, sold as fodder, could provide them with extra freight to haul. And before long,
the railroad had initiated a vast program to provide free plants and advice on how to grow kudzu for animal feed."

I posted this quote to the Southern Railway Yahoo group a few years back and some of the COG people said there was no record of Rigdon being the AA for the line.

And having grown up and lived in the middle of this stuff all my life, I can tell you that the only thing that likes to eat it are goats, and they have to be damn hungry to have them choose Kudzu over anything else.

A few years back I was a contract inspector for the NCDOT on the railbanked Piedmont & Northern. In a a single month's time, the track went from completely clear to completely impassable on a Fairmont motorcar. We wrapped so much of that damn vine around our rear axle that it took the better part of an hour to untangle it all.

Damn John Rigdon!!! Damn him I say!! :>)

And Happy New Year everyone else!

Matt

Regarding the vine that ate the South...

Kudzu was introduced to the United States in 1876 at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Countries were invited to build exhibits to celebrate the 100th birthday of the U.S. The Japanese government constructed a beautiful garden filled with plants from their country. The large leaves and sweet-smelling blooms of kudzu captured the imagination of American gardeners who used the plant for ornamental purposes.

Florida nursery operators, Charles and Lillie Pleas, discovered that animals would eat the plant and promoted its use for forage in the 1920s. Their Glen Arden Nursery in Chipley sold kudzu plants through the mail. A historical marker there proudly proclaims "Kudzu Developed Here."

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Soil Conservation Service promoted kudzu for erosion control. Hundreds of young men were given work planting kudzu through the Civilian Conservation Corps. Farmers were paid as much as eight dollars an acre as incentive to plant fields of the vines in the 1940s.

Kudzu's most vocal advocate was Channing Cope of Covington, Georgia who promoted use of the vine to control erosion. Cope wrote about kudzu in articles for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and talked about its virtues frequently on his daily WSB-AM radio program broadcast from his front porch. During the 1940s, he traveled across the southeast starting Kudzu Clubs to honor what he called "the miracle vine."

Cope was very disappointed when the U.S. government stopped advocating the use of kudzu in 1953. The USDA finally labelled kudzu a "noxious weed" in 1972.

This information came from one of the many websites devoted to the plant (unbelievable!), and based on personal synthesizing of the various articles seems overall very complete. My personal favorite is kudzufreecommunities.org, which I wholly support as a former soldier in the war on kudzu (it grew along the back of our property in Roswell, Georgia).

On a temporary reprieve in our new neighborhood in Suwanee,
Mike

It does appear that Southern Railway used kudzu along many areas of the Washington-Atlanta main, based on what I see here in northeastern Georgia...

If you really are interested in kudzu stoppage, read the info at http://kidzu-free.org. This is really the best source I have seen on chemicals to stop kudzu. As I travel the highways, the growth of kudzu is tremendous and very little seems to be going on to stop it. I shall try some of the methods at Andalusia when I am there to see if I can help recover the inspection of the equipment.
Harry