Preserved American 4-6-2 locomotive (SOU Ps-4 class)
This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations.(January 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
Southern Railway 1401
Southern Railway 1401 seen in the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC
It pulled Southern's highest-level passenger trains from 1926 until dieselization in the early 1950s, mostly on Southern's Charlotte Division between Salisbury, North Carolina and Greenville, South Carolina. On Saturday night, April 25th, 1942, #1401 and fellow class locomotive #1403, derailed and landed on their sides when they hit a stalled truck on the crossing at Norcross, Georgia. Its most famous and historic use was as one of the locomotives that pulled President Franklin Roosevelt's funeral train from Warm Springs, Georgia, to Washington in April 1945.[4] The Smithsonian Institution gathered information on two of 1401's engineers from a 1962 Greenville, SC, newspaper interview with one of the Southern's fireman nicknamed "Box Car". "Box Car" (fireman for "DC") accidentally confused the engineers, who happened to be brothers. Oscar "OC" Surratt was one of the engineers on the train that took Roosevelt to Warm Springs. His brother Cleve "DC" Surratt was one of the engineers that brought Roosevelt's body back to Washington. In the 1950s, war hero and outside legal counsel to Southern Graham Claytor (who would later become Southern's president) convinced then-Southern president Harry deButts to donate one of the retired Ps-4s to the Smithsonian instead of scrapping it. In this way 1401 was saved, and has been on display at the Smithsonian since it was delivered there on November 25, 1961.[5][6]
Current status[]
Today Southern Railway 1401 is one of the exhibits in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Southern cosmetically restored the locomotive just before sending it for display at the Smithsonian, and it was probably stored serviceable when it was retired from active service, but it has not operated in more than half a century. When Graham Claytor was a Southern executive in the mid-1960s, he attempted to lease 1401 from the Smithsonian for operational use in Southern's steam excursion program. The Smithsonian refused, and Claytor leased Southern Railway No. 4501 (originally a freight locomotive with a 2-8-2 wheel arrangement) and painted it in the green, gold, and silver scheme instituted for the Ps-4s.
