Tacoma2012: The Norfolk Southern Executive Office Train

Post by KCT (4/9/2014):

I had the honor this week to attend the 2014 Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club. Norfolk Southern transports our Executive Office Train to Augusta, GA each year for this event to host dignitaries, customers, and railroad colleagues. The locomotives used to pull the train are F-9A and F-7B locomotives (we call them "F-Units"). These round-nosed locomotives were built in the early 1950s by the Electro-Motive Division of General Motors and feature a modern-day interpretation of the "tuxedo" paint scheme of the first F-Unit built for the Southern Railway in 1939. NS purchased these locomotives in 2005 and they were reconstructed and upgraded at Norfolk Southern's Juniata Locomotive shop in Altoona, PA.

A few of the office cars at our Augusta yard this week are the:

NS-1 Virginia (dining-observation car) and NS-2 Carolina (4-bedroom executive sleeper); they were built in 1928 by Pullman
NS-3 Claytor Lake, built in 1924 and rumored to be haunted
NS-4 Michigan and NS-5 Maryland (sleeper cars built in the 1920s)
NS-7 Pennsylvania (sleeper car; the first all-steel car built for the Norfolk & Western)
NS-9 Alabama, NS-11 Illinois, NS-12 Indiana, NS-13 Georgia (sleeper cars)
NS-18 General William Mahone (dining car built in 1949)
NS-19 Kentucky (dining and lounge car that is frequently seen at Union Station in Washington DC)
NS-23 Buena Vista, built in 1918 and serves as the track inspection car with a large observation window at the rear window
NS-24 Delaware, built in 1954 and is a two-story dome-topped coach