So much ink has been poured and so many electrons expended on the 4501 that I have to ask, "What makes this locomotive, among so many others, so special?"

True, she's a good looker, but that can't be all; one could argue that she actually is pretty average or typical in terms of appearance. She's hardly the most modern of steam locomotives, and from a railroad that didn't really have modern steam power. She's nowhere near the largest or fastest or most powerful of locomotives that have been restored over the years. Her regular service was just average, too, no glamorous stuff, no running on the Crescent, much less the 20th Century. Finished out her Southern days in local freight service, and on a line that was something of a backwater for SR at that. Final days were with a shortline in the fastness of Appalachia, hauling coal. No glamour there, either.

So, just for fun, let's hear what makes this very typical, very average steam locomotive the special machine she is. . .

Floor open for comments.

4501 is special, because, she is possibly the main reason we have mainline steam in the US today. She started a rail fan movement that is still moving today (stronger than it has been in a long time). She is special to me, because of Pentrex's "Steam to Chicago" the 1993 Independence Limited through my home area with 4501 in the lead. For years she was the "Green Steam Locomotive" to me, and now known as 4501. She is my favorite even though I have only seen her 1 time in pieces in TVRM's shops, and the thought to see her personally operate next weekend thrills me to death. That is 4501 to me!

J3a-614 thanks for asking the question.
No man made machine has been quite as anthropomorphized as the steam locomotive. They excite the senses they can be seen, heard, smelled, and touched. It is a steam locomotives ability to bring all this together in a way that folks can feel the power, elation, or struggle that drives our connection to them. 4501 does all this, but has one other thing going for her. She’s the average gal that became homecoming queen, “Rudy”, and “Sea Biscuit”, all wrapped up into one. We all love a story about the underdog triumphing in the end. People relate to stories not machines. It’s her story that people connect to.
4501did the unthinkable. The cast aside engine became the pride of the Railroad – She’s the little engine that did not could. From the dead line in 1948 to the Mainline in 1964 her reemergence shocked the RR world. Thank you to Paul, Robert, and Graham for seeing a champion is this pre super power era steam locomotive.

Jeff, that is a really big part of the U.S. I might add.

Also don't forget that she shares three of the digits of likely the most visited steam locomotive in the word the 1401 - stuffed and mounted as that "01" is. Then all those years dressed like the 1401 endear her to many.

Picture's worth a thousand words

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=36274&start=105

I only saw 4501 twice, once in 1974 when she came through my hometown of Tallahassee, Florida (on SCL tracks) on a ferry run somewhere. The other time was in 2012 when I saw her being worked on in TVRM. But growing up in the South as a train fan, you couldn't not hear about 4501 with a frequency.
"southern154" called it, as this was one of the first locomotives to break class I RRs back into allowing steam (yeah, plenty of Class 1s had steam they kept around into the 60s and UP still had 844, but I don't recall a Class 1 bringing back a locomotive they'd previously gotten rid of before) that was so well known to fans.
In time, when most of the people who remember 4501's 'glory days' are gone, her importance beyond being just another steam engine that wasn't scrapped, will wane.

I don't believe that the "importance will wain."

As a "millennial" who lives and has always lived in the "north," I am just as excited as anyone for this locomotive's return. For those of us who never saw the engine either under steam or maybe ever at all, the pilgrimage to her stomping grounds is a trip we've waited many many years for. The sheer improbability of the engine's return to the mainline is worth the trip.

This locomotive isn't just simply another one of the many that grace the rails every year. This engine is an icon. I compare it to a field of dreams like scenario where my generation gets to see a young Yaz play at Fenway or Paul Hornung run the Packer sweep in person or in HD on YouTube.

Icons are always legendary and that status only grows with each telling of the story and each new encounter.

She was "special" when she was green.

I love the green Southern paint schemes as much as the next person, but I wouldn't go so far as to say the locomotive is less "special" in black. I'm personally in the camp that thinks these engines look best in green, but the color does nothing to change the heritage or the fact that we now have another operational steam engine pulling passenger excursion service.

Even having said that about the color, I can't look at this engine under steam and with her bell ringing on the live stream and say she isn't as aesthetically "special" in black as she would be in green. Just my own opinion.

She was one of the mainstays from the old NS steam program although I don't feel like she traveled up north as much as "the big engines" did. It's always exciting when an engine comes back to life but for me I was disappointed I didn't get to see her during her last career so I'll be excited to see her this time around.

Just something pleasant to add, likely written in the 1970s, as the original program was picking up momentum--two versions, one faster, the other slower, perhaps more soulful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=talNRabNeyA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7vwiFzvTSQ

She was special because she was saved because of one man's dream and without that dream, a lot of what we take for granted today probably would not have come about as it did. Without the 4501, there would have been no Southern Railway System Steam Program-no excursions as we know them today and probably no big locomotives in operation. Remember that the Reading had stopped the Rambles a few years prior to the Southern operating the 4501.

It was only because of Paul Merriman and the volunteers at TVRM that the 4501 ran on the excursions out of Richmond in 1966 and the Southern excursion program started shortly thereafter. The attention that the 4501 got on her ferry move from Stearns, Kentucky to Chattanooga convinced the railroad that steam train excursions were a viable way for the railroad to restore relations with the trackside communities. The 4501 is a "average" locomotive, but the people who have been associated with her have been and always will be exceptional. That is why the 4501 is special.

The 4501 is special because she faithfully pulled excursions from New Orleans to Washington to Atlanta to Chicago, performed before the cameras in the the Johnny Cash railroad documentary and "Fools Parade", and was the closest operating mainline steam to a Texas born kid who saw her chronicles in Trains Magazine, who still has the magazine with the profile of Bill Purdie on the deck of 4501. The 4501 WAS steam, and will always, at least to this generation, be the genesis of what steam has become, and her rebirth signals steam will be with us for a long time to come.