Southern Railway 1509

Southern Railway 1509, nicknamed Maud, is an A class 0-4-4T Forney type steam locomotive and the oldest surviving steam locomotive of the Southern Railway. Baldwin built it in December 1879 for the Atlanta and Charlotte Air Line Railway, which numbered it 27 and named it Talullah. The line was later absorbed by the Richmond and Danville Railroad, which itself became the Southern Railway, so the engine ended up as Southern No. 1509. Little is known of its history before the 1903 renumbering, and company records from that time are missing, incomplete or contradictory. It was probably used on passenger work, perhaps suburban or commuter runs, and was classed as a yard switcher when renumbered. Southern rebuilt it in 1903 and from then until retirement it switched at the railway's Pegram Shops in Atlanta, where the shop employees named it Maud. It was retired on 29 June 1950 and moved to Inman, Georgia, to be scrapped, but the shop's workers wrote to the railway's president asking for it to be saved. It stood on display outside the shops until 1960, when it was donated to the Atlanta chapter of the National Railway Historical Society and placed in the Southeastern Railway Museum in Duluth, Georgia, where it awaits a cosmetic restoration.