“Hey Freddy, you wanna go ridin’ Saturday?” asked Ross E. Rowland Jr., a successful Wall Street commodities broker who was able to channel his financial success into his undying love for steam locomotives, preservation and big-time railroading.
I could expect such phone calls on Thursdays from New York.
“Be at Camden Station at 6:30 a.m.Saturday for breakfast aboard my private car and then we’ll go ridin’,” he’d say.
When you’re on the railroad, days start early and chow and pots of hot coffee are the necessary curtain raisers.
He had assembled a staff of retired Pullman porters and dining car chefs who were only too glad to go back on the road again aboard his classic 1920s-era New York Central business car, and prepared a breakfast that harkened back to the luxury days of railroad dining.
Ridin’ with Ross meant you rode in the cab of the engine, and isn’t that every boy who loves trains dream? Also, you worked.
I recall on one of our first trips, we had paused at Frederick Junction in Western Maryland to unload the passengers for what is called a photo run-by. Ross then backed up the train and came rushing forward with plenty of smoke, thrashing rods all the while with the banshee whistle screaming.
My seat was on the left side of the cab, which is the head brakeman’s seat, right behind the fireman’s seat.
I was blithely taking it all in, the nutty smell of drifting anthracite coal smoke, hot grease and oil, and how damn lucky I was when all of a sudden Rowland snapped me back to reality when he yelled across the cab, “Whaddya doin’?”
He added with all the authority and charm of a drill sergeant, “When you ride with me, you work, so get off your ass and help unload the passengers.”
Gruff, yes, but lovably gruff.
Rowland, one of the nation’s premier railroad preservationists and operators of steam locomotives, died July 19 in Watertown, N.Y.
He was 85.
I first got to know Rowland in 1975 when he assembled the American Freedom Train loaded with significant historical American artifacts, which toured 38 states celebrating the nation’s bicentennial. Some of the items aboard were George Washington’s draft copy of the Constitution, Joe Louis’s boxing trunks, and that hat John Wayne wore in “True Grit.”
A larger than life figure, Rowland, a burly man with long dark sideburns and rimless gold glasses, first burst onto the bigtime steam railroad scene in 1969 when he organized the Golden Spike Centennial Limited passenger train that steamed across the country from Grand Central Terminal in New York to Promontory Point, Utah, that marked the 100th anniversary completion of the Transcontinental Railroad.
Irrepressible, likeable and with the skill set of a P.T. Barnum, Rowland had organized in 1966 the High Iron Co. in a former Central Railroad of New Jersey station in Lebanon, N.J., he organized steam railroad outings throughout the Mid-Atlantic, but he had bigger things in mind when it came to assembling his bicentennial train which entertained and enthralled millions across the country before ending its run at the end of 1976.
But first, he needed to locate a steam locomotive capable of handling a 20-car train, and he found it in Baltimore at Striegel Equipment & Supply Co. in Curtis Bay.
It was a former Reading Railroad T-1 Northern with a 4-8-4 wheel arrangement that the Baldwin Locomotive Works had built in Eddystone, Pa., and soldiered on for the Reading Co., pulling mainly freight and coal drags until being retired in 1956.
The 110-foot-long engine that weighed 400 tons, carried 26 tons of coal and 19,000 gallons of water, was sold to Striegel in 1967, where it had sat in the scrapyard waiting for the scrapper’s torch.
The locomotive was moved to the B & O’s Riverside Shops in Locust Point, where it was restored to operation in a herculean 30-day effort.
The 2101 headed the bicentennial train in the eastern part of the country and turned it over in Chicago to a former Southern Pacific steam engine that toured the western states.
When the 2101’s days pulling the train ended in 1976, the locomotive continued on until 1979, pulling Chessie Steam Excursions in honor of the B & O’s 150th birthday.
After being severely mechanically damaged in a Kentucky roundhouse fire in 1979, the engine was donated to the B & O Museum, where it was cosmetically restored and is currently about to undergo another makeover.
In turn for the 2101, the museum agreed to sell to Rowland the Chesapeake & Ohio No. 614, which is 110-feet long and tips the scales at 239 tons.
Designated by the C & O as a “Greenbrier Class” locomotive, it was built by the Lima Locomotive Works in 1948.
Rowland was simply not an ordinary enthusiast; he was descended from a family of railroaders. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather had all been railroadmen.
Born in Albany, N.Y., where his father worked for the New York Central, Rowland moved with his family to Cranford, N.J., when his father went to work for the Central Railroad of New Jersey.
Rowland had always been fascinated by steam engines and began as a kid hanging around a small roundhouse in Cranford, where the railroad workers there were only too happy to teach the young man about maintaining and operating steam engines. When he was a teenager, they let him lubricate engines and move them onto the ready track for outgoing trains.
On weekends, he’d swap his Brooks Brothers business suits for traditional engineer attire of bib overalls, dark blue shirt, a striped engineer’s jacket and hat. This was no costume but his functional wardrobe, and he could operate a steam engine with all of the dexterity and skill of a professional.
When signals were green and tracks aligned his way, Rowland didn’t dawdle getting his train over the line, all the while entertaining lineside crowds with his handling of the melodious steam whistle and putting on a grand show.
He wasn’t interested in operating trains at 20 mph over ancient track, but ached for the challenge and speed mainline trackage afforded and he did not disappoint.
In the mid-1980s, and using the 614 as a prototype, the steamer had been outfitted to gather test data while pulling regular coal trains on the C&O.
Rowland still believed in the practicality of steam and formed American Coal Enterprises, whose mission, called ACE 3000, was to design a modern era steam engine whose functions would be overseen by computers. Some of his original backers included Chessie System, Burlington Northern, General Electric and Babcock & Wilcox Railroad. In the end, as major partners departed, his dream came to an end.
But Rowland was always a master at reinventing himself, and for a number of years ran successful excursion trains with the 614 from Hoboken, N.Y., to Port Jervis, N.Y. He also proposed running a five-star luxury train from Washington to the famed Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., which also never came to fruition.
From 2011 to 2025, when it was sold to RJD America, the engine was on display at the C&O Railway Heritage Center in Clifton Forge, W.Va.
The 614 is currently undergoing restoration in Pennsylvania, which will return it to the rails.
At his death, the little boy who so loved steam engines throughout his life was organizing a new Freedom Train to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday next year.
