NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — As soon as the end of next year, Nashvillians could once again hear a distinct whistle that once rang through Music City as locomotive No. 576 pulled passengers and freight through the area.
The World War II-era steam locomotive has been under restoration for nearly five years now, with a team of over 100 volunteers making sure every nut and bolt is put together just right so that the historic engine can make excursions out of Nashville for many years to come.
“We’re at this point now where we see the finish line in sight and, in the next year or so, we’re going to be testing the boiler, having the steam test, and that’s when the steam locomotive itself will come back to life," said Joey Bryan, Vice President of the Nashville Steam Preservation Society. "You’ll get to hear all of the sounds and sensory experiences that inspired so many, including musicians that incorporated those sounds in their music.”
Originally built in 1942, the locomotive spent 10 years of its life moving troops and supplies, as well as other routine passengers, across the Southeast. The tracks ran from Nashville west to Memphis and down to Atlanta, with stops along the way in Chattanooga.
Clik here to view.
After it was put out of service, the steam engine became the backdrop of thousands of family photos in Centennial Park. Kids would climb on the train and play in the cab, pulling on the throttle and various knobs inside. It also made appearances on album covers and in other media, with Johnny Cash posing in front of locomotive 576 on the cover of Life Magazine in 1969.
"It’s really been a treasure here in Nashville," Bryan said. "When the opportunity came to bring it back to life and give people a sense of what it was like to travel back in the day, we just jumped on it."
In 2019, it was towed to the Tennessee Central Railroad Museum by the Nashville Steam Preservation Society to become a fully working locomotive again. Over the years, bringing locomotive 576 back to operation has been a shared dream for many volunteers and staff members who have lent a hand in the restoration.
A lot of 'ups and downs' in the restoration process
Stephen Hook, the volunteer coordinator for the Nashville Steam Preservation Society, was still a sophomore in high school when he joined the team. Since then, he and his team of volunteers have put in nearly 45,000 hours of work on the project.
As one might expect, restoring an over 80-year-old train has come with a set of unique challenges.
Clik here to view.
“There’s not a linear process necessarily to restoring a steam locomotive. It’s a lot of ins and outs, ups and downs, and overcoming challenges that we run into as we go," Hook said. "There’s a lot of things we’ve learned about this locomotive that we did not know until we got it apart, got pieces out and said, ‘To make a resilient machine we should probably touch this now.'”
The rebuilding process has involved disassembling the locomotive to its frame, boiler and driving wheels so it can be re-machined as necessary.
Back in the 1940s, locomotives like No. 576 could be manufactured within months, but now Hook said it's much harder. This is partly due to the fact that a lot of the components on a steam engine are not made anymore, nor are some of the tools needed to work on them.
"It’s not like your car where you can take a water pump off and put another one on. For the most part, all of the components have to be made new to the specification of the specific part or area we’re working on," Hook said. “And with manufacturing and tool companies kind of becoming few and far between, especially in a lot of these cities like Nashville... We have to find tools, we have to find machine shops, places that can do things and help us all over the place.”
Clik here to view.
Many local businesses and machine shops have stepped in to offer their services throughout the process, which Hook said has been a tremendous help. Sometimes the team even fashions their own tools, with much of their work being referenced off of old, standard practice from railroad companies.
Taking apart and putting back together some parts of the locomotive also takes a lot of time, but Hook said the extra days and hours are necessary to make sure the engine is in top shape. While working on the boiler, the team had to remove around 350 long rods called staybolts.
"It's a lot of work to take those out, put them back in, especially with the way material costs have increased from COVID. That was another major challenge," Hook said. “Trying to crowdsource the funding and fundraising, even with our very generous matching grants and generous donors, that’s a big hill to overcome the way the prices came up.”
Clik here to view.
According to Bryan, the Nashville Steam Preservation Society is currently just about $250,000 shy of where they'd like to be to finish the restoration. However, money has continuously flowed in from donors from all 50 states, and even some across the globe. To date, more than $2.6 million has been raised for the restoration.
“It really stands to the common dream and goal that everybody here, both in this building and the people who have donated, share in the desire to see this engine operate and see what it can do for the community, both in Nashville and all the surrounding areas," Hook said.
'It's going to be emotional is an understatement'
One of the surprises Hook said the team is keeping in their "back pocket" is what the locomotive is going to look like when it rolls out in a fresh coat of paint. With a fresh set of wheels and most of its parts together, the locomotive looks the most like a train it has since the restoration began. All that's left is a bit more work on the boiler, a few other components and extensive testing, including a hydrostatic test.
"The boiler is the part of the locomotive where we harness our energy from, so with the amount of work we’ve had to do to it, that will be a real big turning point for the project when we get to do that test," Hook said. “That will basically say, ‘All of our work that we’ve done up to this point is solid and ready for service.' After that it will be a pretty quick put back together phase.”
Clik here to view.
Their goal is to start running tests in 2025. Barring any hiccups or unexpected challenges, locomotive 576 could be pulling public excursions out of downtown Nashville to Lebanon and Watertown by the end of 2025.
“We’re far enough away from the steam age, nobody really saw these things operate every day," Hook said. "So, the goal is to really operate the locomotive in a way that gives everybody the chance to both ride and admire trackside, to really share this piece of history.”
To Bryan, the history of locomotive 576 is particularly significant to Nashville and its residents as the city continues to experience an abundant amount of new growth.
“You think about that struggle we have currently between new Nashville and old Nashville; well, this is literally a piece of old Nashville we’re bringing back to new Nashville," he said. "It’s a piece of Nashville’s history that has been kind of buried over the years, and this is how people—this is how musicians traveled back in the day, and this is what helped make Music City, Music City."
The culmination of the project will also be an exciting moment for Hook, who said he's looking forward to the day he and his team can stand back and say, "We did that."
Clik here to view.
“It’s going to be an exciting moment, I think for myself and everybody on the team," Hook said. "I was a sophomore in high school when I started working on this locomotive in the park, and to see how much life changes for somebody going through that age change and then watching how much work we’ve done on the locomotive and how much its life has changed, it's going to be emotional is an understatement.”
To help cover the remaining costs, Bryan said the Nashville Steam Preservation Society currently has a $25,000 matching grant, meaning every donation made through the end of 2024 will be matched "dollar for dollar." Donations can be made online by visiting the Nashville Steam website.