The Southern Railway No. 1401 is a class Ps-4 4-6-2 "Pacific" Type steam locomotive built by ALCO in 1926 for the Southern Railway. It was one of the second batch of thirty-seven Ps-4s delivered in 1926 (#1393-#1409, #6476-#6482 and #6688-#6691), thirty-two from Alco and five from Baldwin.
This locomotive pulled Southern's highest-level passenger trains for much of its career from 1926 until dieselization in the early 1950s, mostly on Southern's Charlotte Division.
It is the most famous and historic locomotive that use was as one of the locomotives that pulled President Franklin Roosevelt's funeral train from Warm Springs, Georgia, to Washington in April 1945.
In April 1942, 1401 and sister engine 1403 nearly saw the end of their career on the railroad when they both derailed by a stalled automobile truck at Norcross, Georgia. Fortunately, the two locomotives were repaired and resumed revenue service until 1952.
In the late 1950s, war hero and outside legal counsel W. Graham Claytor Jr. convinced Southern president Harry A. DeButts to donate No. 1401 to the National Museum of American History from the threat of the scrapper's torch. Today, it was currently on permanent static display at the museum itself in Washington, D.C. as the sole survivor of the Southern Railway Ps-4 class since 1961.
Trivia[]
- In 2012, the locomotive made an appearance in an episode of Parks and Recreation.
- Once Oscar "OC" Surratt was one of the engineers on the train that took Roosevelt to Warm Springs.
- No. 1401 is the only Ps-4 on the Southern Railway's main division to have a unique CNO&TP style number plate.
- The National Museum of American History had 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.
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