Behind the steam scenes of a beloved movie
Cinematic improvisation in a classic film
It was a poignant scene from the days when local passenger trains proliferated across rural America. A loving father has brought his eldest daughter to the depot to see her off. She’s traveling across the country to join her new husband as they pursue a life elsewhere. He feels she’s much too young for such adventure, but his concerns are tempered by his faith in her precocious nature. He wonders aloud if he’ll ever see her again. As he paces nervously, a steam whistle calls around the curve. As the engine passes in a cacophony of sound and a shower of coal smoke, cinders, and steam, they embrace one last time.
Surrounding the scene is a director, a cinematographer, a camera operator, assistant cameramen, a gaffer, a key grip, sound technicians, propmen, hair and makeup, art director, extras, and a host of others. The actors portraying the real-life participants — Sissy Spacek as Loretta Lynn, and Levon Helm as Ted Webb, her father — pull off an extraordinary performance as the cameras roll. Welcome to the filming of “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” Universal Studios’ Oscar-nominated 1980 biopic of country music legend Loretta Lynn.
PLANNING A MOVIE
Planning a major motion picture is a logistical nightmare. Once the project is financed and ready, an army of specialists must complete a complex puzzle. In this case, Universal desired locations that convincingly told the story of the early life of Lynn and her rise to fame and fortune from modest beginnings in a cabin in Butcher Hollow, Ky.
Movie location specialists seek sites in an appropriate setting (the central Appalachia coalfields in this case) and in proximity to each other. Working with film commissions in both Kentucky and Virginia, the location crew started in 1978. Besides dealing with bringing in the equipment and crafts necessary to shoot a movie where little such infrastructure or skills exist, it’s also imperative to minimize the costs of moving equipment and personnel from location to location. Equally important are the transportation of talent (the paid actors), local lodging, catering, recruiting extras from the local populace, and modifying or building structures or temporary sets. For wardrobe specialists, period-appropriate clothing must be secured for anyone to be seen on camera. Set dressers are tasked with procuring appropriate props to complete the illusion of reality on screen. No detail is unimportant.
Universal considered several possible areas for the movie, but discarded the idea
of shooting in Van Lear, Ky., where Loretta and her family lived (Butcher’s Hollow was near a branch of the Chesapeake & Ohio’s Big Sandy Division). Too much had changed there to give an authentic appearance. And critical to the selection of a setting for filming a movie that included a steam locomotive was the fact that during this period, Southern Railway ran a robust steam excursion program, and Southern’s Appalachia Division served southwest Virginia where much appropriate scenery could be found.
Even in 1979, when almost all filming was done on location, there were few options for finding an intact old “coal camp” with nearly identical houses for miners and their families, a company store, an active tipple, and particularly a steam locomotive. No doubt the filmmakers turned to Southern’s Jim Bistline, assistant to the president, and the person who managed the company’s extensive steam excursion program. With his help, Universal’s location people zeroed in on Wise County, Va., and additional spots just across the mountain in eastern Kentucky.
A still active but soon-to-close mining camp in Pardee, Va., at the end of a branch of Southern Railway’s Interstate Railroad had enough intact dwellings, a closed (but intact) brick company store, and a working coal tipple. Fourteen miles away in Norton, Va., was a grocery warehouse where an indoor set for the Butcher Hollow cabin of the Lynn family could be built. A county fairground just 4 miles from Norton was critical as well. A street scene along a railroad would be filmed (without a train) on the Louisville & Nashville in Blackey, Ky. Other locations included Flat Gap, Eolia, and Bottom Fork in Letcher County, Ky., and Redfox in Knott County.
The region was abuzz with “movie fever,” and many of my friends were signing
up as extras or helping Universal in various ways. My interest, however, was seeing Southern Railway 2-8-2 No. 4501 in steam for its role. I kept abreast of things with Appalachia Division Superintendent Jim Seay, and Kenny Fannon, a fellow fan and historian with whom I had shared firing duties years earlier on former Buffalo Creek & Gauley 2-8-0 No. 4 on a shortlived local tourist line. Seay promised us we could ride the cab with him from Bulls Gap, Tenn., to Appalachia, Va.
Universal Studios negotiated a contract with the Southern to provide and staff a steam engine, as well as coaches. It’s highly likely Bistline insisted the locomotive be clearly lettered “SOUTHERN” as opposed to C&O.
Southern was well known at the time for its robust program of steam excursions, using famed locomotives such as No. 4501 and Consolidations Nos. 630 and 722, all genuine Southern Railway locomotives restored to service. Savannah & Atlanta 4-6-2 No. 750 was also one of the workhorses. More recently Bistline and Master Mechanic of Steam, Bill Purdie, had augmented the older and overworked engines with the likes of former Texas & Pacific 2-10-4 No. 610, a behemoth of a Lima Super Power engine with a rigid 22-foot wheelbase. As the time for filming approached, Bistline and Purdie had limited motive power options to meet the contractual obligations for an operable steam locomotive for the mid-March shooting date in southwestern Virginia. No. 610 was down for repairs and probably couldn’t have operated around the 18-degree, limited-clearance reverse curve through Natural Tunnel, Va., let alone the light rail of a coal branch. Famed No. 4501 — the obvious first choice — was being overhauled and unavailable until early May. No. 630 was withdrawn from service in 1978, and No. 722 had been leased to short line Wilmington & Western in Delaware between May and August of that year. S&A Pacific No. 750 was also out for repairs and literally in pieces in Southern’s Irondale (Ala). steam shop.
CANADIAN ROYALTY IN SOUTHERN GREASE PAINT
Over winter 1978-’79, Bistline and Purdie already knew they had to augment their
available locomotives if they had any hope of meeting an ambitious 1979 excursion schedule. After an exhaustive search, they discovered former Canadian Pacific 4-6-4 No. 2839 in Northampton, Pa. The CP had retired No. 2839 in 1959 and it was stricken from the roster in 1963. A group of railfans that included Mike Eagleson, Ron Ziel, and Victor Hand purchased the engine in 1969 and began a decade-long restoration that was completed by volunteers outdoors, without benefit of a shop. She was a product of Montreal Locomotive Works in 1937
— a semi-streamlined locomotive and an esteemed member of the railroad’s Royal Hudson class. Sister engine No. 2850 had pulled a royal train for King George VI and Queen Elizabeth on a 3,224-mile trip from Quebec City to Vancouver in 1939. The king was so impressed, all members of the class were christened Royal Hudsons, complete with an embossed crown on the front of the running boards.
The engine had changed hands a few years earlier, but the new owners completed the job. Freshly painted and lettered
Canadian Pacific and ready to roll (but untested in operation), No. 2839 had initially been planned to be leased to the Wilmington & Western. That’s when Bistline and Purdie stepped in, suggesting Southern lease the 4-6-4 for a couple of years, and let the W&W use No. 722 instead.
On Feb. 5, 1979, CP 2839 gingerly eased south (on a line that would be abandoned as soon as the engine was off the property), reaching Southern rails in Alexandria in time for a last tuneup before steaming south with a trainload of excited enthusiasts. Trailing a nine-car train (plus an auxiliary Big Emma tender from L&N 2-8-4 No. 1975), the three-day trip handled passengers between Alexandria and Salisbury, N.C., on March 3, Salisbury to Atlanta on March 4, and a deadhead move on to Birmingham (location of the steam shop in suburban Irondale) on March 5. The untested locomotive made the trip without major problems and reached speeds of 75 mph en route. So far, so good.
Sam Dunaway is now a retired mining engineer living near Richmond, Va., but in 1979 he was one of several volunteers who served as crew members for Purdie. An assignment with No. 2839 interested him, so he stepped up. “I called Mr. Purdie on March 6 to ask him about working on the
movie trip. Mrs. Purdie [Sarah, who was a fine person] answered the phone and said they had just gotten in that morning with No. 2839 and the electrical power had kicked off in the shop. She put him on, and he sounded tired. They had arrived in Birmingham from Atlanta at
3:30 a.m.”
Sam would be assisted by
Carl Cruger, another experienced Southern volunteer fireman. Carl was also leader of the steam team with the Kentucky Railway Museum, the group doing its own outdoor restoration of former L&N 4-6-2 No. 152, a Rogers product of 1905. The project resulted in the elderly engine returning to service in fall 1985.
Sam and Carl arrived at the Irondale shop to learn that
No. 2839 was the only operable locomotive available. Canceling the contract wasn’t possible, so they went to work to transform the Royal Hudson into a Southern Railway locomotive. Purdie asked Paul Corria, a young railfan and painter, to come to the shop that night with his paint supplier. Assisted by his wife,
Corria successfully matched the
CP Tuscan Red color on the tender and covered both sides with fresh paint.
Sam continued to recount the work: “Early the next morning, Carl and I pulled the 2839 out of the shop, fired her up, and loaded supplies and tools. Paul and his wife skillfully stenciled ‘SOUTHERN’ in gold Railroad Roman, painted out the CP beaver herald on the cab sides, and added ‘SOUTHERN.’ We left about 1 p.m. on March 15, running light with the former L&N M-1 tender and our self-unloading coal gondola to Attalla, Ala., and beyond to Chattanooga for the night.”
Out on the main, Sam said Purdie had the Hudson’s ears pinned back. “The main steam line to the booster had a ball joint that was hitting fresh ballast piled between the rails for a resurfacing gang,” Sam said. It was so bad that, at one point, Purdie wondered aloud if they were on the ground. There was also an issue with the whistle. “The lever was jury-rigged to Purdie’s personal property — a chime whistle from Ps-4 1406 — and somehow it became bent, and we couldn’t blow it. We stopped to fix that only to discover we had no lights or radio. A fuse had blown.
“Near Trussville,” Sam continued, “Mr. Purdie stopped and walked over to an old country store for some snacks. The AGS (Southern subsidiary Alabama Great Southern) road conductor was beside himself, afraid we were going to be dead on the law before Attala. He told Mr. Purdie it might cost him his job. Purdie was unfazed. ‘Now let me know when to stop because all we have is the M-1 tender and the coal car for brakes.’ It was indeed a wild ride that day.”
The train overnighted in Chattanooga, where eight passenger cars already there were added, then departed on March 16 for a shorter leg to Knoxville. The next day, the Old Smoky Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society sold one-way tickets to Appalachia, Va., with chartered buses to return the riders to Knoxville.
INTO THE APPALACHIANS: NO TURNING BACK
At the division point of Bulls Gap, Tenn., Jim Seay boarded the cab along with Fannon. I was detained at home that morning and unable to join them until a servicing stop in Gate City, but I was there in plenty of time for the drama that followed.
The train stopped just short of Natural Tunnel to allow the riders to walk ahead, through the tunnel, for a spectacular emergence on the far side as the engine blasted out in a cloud of smoke and steam. Sam recalled No. 2839 was far below its 275 psi working pressure. He and Carl cleaned the fire, rocking the grates to remove clinkers, to restore steam pressure. Until this moment, the booster had not been used on this trip. As the engine started moving after a bout of slippery drivers, the booster worked fine except the cylinder cocks would not close. Sam walked beside the booster, banging away on the linkage to try and get the cocks to close. No luck. The engine slipped and nearly stalled inside the manmade Little Tunnel going into the natural passage, immediately filling the cab with smoke. It was instantly pitch black with nothing to breathe except coal smoke. Kenny and I later confessed we were both thinking about crawling toward the door in the all-weather cab to get off and exit the tunnel on foot.
A mile north (railroad “west”) of the tunnel, the engine stalled twice near milepost 23. Dunaway and Cruger again cleaned the fire as the boiler pressure was down to 225 psi. Southern mechanical forces at Andover had been alerted and brought several bags of traction sand that Sam, Kenny, and I carried up a steep hill to fill the sand compartment on top of the boiler. Bistline later said it was one of two of the most critical moments in his 12 years with the steam program. A diesel assist was considered but discarded. Purdie felt if they could keep steam up, they could make it.
The reverser was so far forward “in the corner” that it became stuck. Sam had to free it up by whacking it with a pipe wrench. The CP engine had a screw-type, air-motor-driven forward/reverse mechanism, operated with a small directional valve. What was most notable was the “steering wheel” for manually operating the reverse. The air motor sounded like an air impact wrench from a garage. After the two stalls on the 1.8% grade below Sunbright, the Hudson at last labored over the top. Except for some momentary slippage coming into Big Stone Gap, the rest of the trip was uneventful.
Kenny and I climbed off in Appalachia and laughed at our black coating of coal
smoke and grime on our faces and clothes. At that moment, Seay, Bistline, and Purdie were in private conference. They motioned for us to join them. Seay spoke first. “If you two can sell enough tickets to cover the cost of the coal, Jim and Bill said they would run a round trip to Norton tomorrow. What do you say?” We didn’t hesitate: “Yes!” We set the ticket price at $5 and Bistline gave us a bank account number where we could deposit Southern’s share of the proceeds. The trip would operate under the auspices of our group, the East Tennessee Chapter of the NRHS, with the two parties splitting the cash 50-50. A local printer in Appalachia volunteered to print the tickets that night, and he was rewarded with a cab ride to Norton and back the next day.
There was no social media in 1979 of course, and there were only two means of getting the word out quickly: two local AM radio stations (daytime only) and old-fashioned word of mouth. Next morning at Andover, Kenny and I sold tickets to a large crowd of people off the hood of my car — all cash transactions. Within 30 minutes, we had sold out all available seats. With Seay, Purdie, and Bistline watching it all, they huddled again and said we could sell tickets for a second train. Within another 30 minutes, those tickets were gone as well. Kenny gathered up the huge pile of cash for counting that evening and depositing the next day. Sales amounted to more than $6,000 ($23,000 in 2021 dollars).
Sam recalled the Norton trips: “It was a beautiful day, and I couldn’t believe the turnout. At Appalachia, a young woman with a little boy approached me with an autograph book. She asked me to sign it, and I wondered, ‘Me?’ I was honored to do it and talked a minute with her son. Mr. Purdie never ignored children and would take the time to speak to them and answer questions.”
The coal for the trip came from a local supplier in Andover. Sam recalled it burned hot, created little smoke, and stayed on the grates for a long time — some of the best fuel they were able to procure. The two public round trips came off without a hitch, including the stretch of nearly 2.5% grade between Dorchester Junction and Norton, where No. 2839’s booster again came in handy.
LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION!
Filming was to begin early on Monday, March 19. Sam recalled: “My day started with a knock on the door at 3:30 a.m. We reported for work, got the engine ready to go, and ran through a briefing with the assigned Interstate Railroad train crew. It was about 35 degrees that morning, and by 5 a.m. we diverged from the main line at Kent Junction for the 8-mile run up the branch to Pardee.”
Sam recalled a guy from the costume department arriving with an engineer’s outfit and a really stupid-looking hat for Purdie. Sam and Carl Cruger would be doing the firing, so they didn’t require a costume. On the first run-by, steam from the open cylinder cocks of No. 2839 nearly blew Helm, Spacek, and the movie crew off the platform. “Mr. Purdie and the director [Michael Apted] had a sidebar conference where he shared some sage advice about being around an operating steam locomotive.”
The next scenes called for the engine to be near the coal tipple, with lots of smoke at the director’s instructions. Sam and Carl obliged by feeding more coal into
No. 2839’s firebox. A frantic lady living in one of the dwellings nearby had her freshly washed clothes on the line to dry, so more public relations skills were called into action. There were also some night scenes at the tipple, including the locomotive. “It was absolutely spectacular, but only a brief portion was used in the final cut for the movie,” Sam noted.
While my job prevented me from visiting the filming site in Pardee, the organization where I was employed delivered nearly 10,000 gallons of water to replenish
No. 2839’s tender one evening. The engine backed the 8 miles to Kent Junction, where we could access it easily with two emergency water trucks. I had the good sense to ask Purdie if he might allow my boss to ride the cab back to the filming site in Pardee, where I could pick him up. My mother and fatherin-law were able to be on site out of camera range to watch the filming both days, so I received first-hand reports.
Filming at Pardee wrapped up on March 20. The Hudson would be returning south light on Wednesday with only the auxiliary water tender. The passenger cars and coal gon would go ahead on a freight. My friend David DeVault and I took the afternoon off to photograph a once-in-alifetime spectacle of a Canadian Pacific steam passenger locomotive posed in the spectacular backdrop of the “amphitheater” at Natural Tunnel. I called Trains Editor David P. Morgan, alerting him of the move and offering to send a selection of images. “Natural Tunnel? So that’s where it is. Yes, I would be delighted to see what you come up with,” Morgan said.
Running as First 90, No. 2839 eased out of the tunnel and spotted up as David and I cranked through film at a torrid pace, changing lenses, and compositions. As soon as we had it all, goodbyes and handshakes were exchanged, and it was over. I stood there and listened as that grand Ps-4 whistle sounded for a grade crossing in the distance at Glenita. One of our shots (with a joint byline as requested for both David and me) was the inside color cover for the July 1979 issue of Trains magazine.
A POSTSCRIPT
“Coal Miner’s Daughter” was released by Universal Pictures on March 7, 1980, nearly a year after the filming took place in southwestern Virginia. The film grossed $67.18 million (on a budget of $15 million) in North America and would be the seventh highest-grossing film of 1980. Adjusted for inflation to 2021 dollars, that would be $256 million gross on a budget of $58 million. It earned seven nominations at the 53rd Academy Awards, including Best Picture, with Sissy Spacek winning Best Actress. It also garnered Golden Globe nominations and awards. In 2019, the film was selected to be preserved in the National Film Registry of the U.S. Library of Congress because it was culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant. Fellow stars Tommy Lee Jones (“Doolittle” Lynn, Loretta’s husband), Levon Helm, better known as the drummer and vocalist for The Band, (Ted Webb, Loretta’s father), and Beverly D’Angelo (Patsy Cline) also turned in stellar performances.
No. 2839 served the Southern well until its final run — a two-day return trip from Atlanta to Alexandria on Nov. 29-30, 1980. The engine was never able to handle long trains in the mountains, though, so one or two FP7s were normally behind her. The Hudson was stored in Pennsylvania afterward, but later attempts to place her back into service failed. After a series of owners, the engine was sold to the Nethercutt Collection in Sylmar, Calif., and shipped there by flatcar. It was restored to its original CP appearance and placed on display outside. Back at Pardee, expanding strip mining operations soon eliminated all traces of the old community. The movie-set depot, however, got a reprieve. At Jim Seay’s request, Universal left it behind. He had entertained thoughts of dismantling it and moving it to his residence in Big Stone Gap but opted not to. Instead, he offered it to Fannon. “We hired some guys to go up to Pardee and take it apart, and reassemble it on our land in Duffield, at the intersection of U.S. 23 and U.S. 58-421,” Fannon says. His private collection of railroadiana spilled over into the depot, which was rechristened with the station signs from the old Southern Railway Duffield depot.
Few people would have known a Royal Hudson from Canada was a last-minute stand in for Southern No. 4501. My friend Sam Lanter, now retired as chief mechanical officer for the Grand Canyon Railway in Williams, Ariz., grew up watching Norfolk & Western steam in his home in Wytheville, Va. Sam thought the Hudson was perfect for its role. “She looked almost like an N&W Class J, only with its nose mashed in.”
The author thanks Sam Dunaway for his recollections, the rare Bistline images, and above all, the suggestion this story be told. Thanks to Dennis Livesey for his cinematic expertise, to Kenny Fannon, and his grandson, Ruston, and Charles Freericks.