Steam preservationist and entrepreneur Ross Rowland passed away on July 19 following a brief battle with cancer. He was 85 years old.
Rowland made his money in the commodity trading market, but his true passion was steam railroading, and in the 1960s and 1970s, he was responsible for some of the biggest steam-powered spectacles of the preservation era. Through his High Iron Company, he operated excursions across the Northeast and Midwest using an eclectic fleet of steam locomotives, including Nickel Plate Road 2-8-4 759, Reading Company 4-8-4 2101, and Canadian Pacific G5 4-6-2s Nos. 1238, 1278, and 1286. In 1969, Nickel Plate 759 led the Golden Spike Centennial Limited to mark the 100th anniversary of the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad.
That tour planted the seed for an even larger one a few years later, when Rowland helped lead the ambitious American Freedom Train tour in 1975 and 1976. Over two years, three steam locomotives (Reading 2101, Southern Pacific 4-8-4, and Texas & Pacific 2-10-4 610), along with a few diesels, pulled a 26-car exhibit train featuring artifacts from U.S. history to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. More than 7 million people visited the train in 48 states, and tens of millions more watched it pass trackside.
After the American Freedom Train, Rowland teamed up with the Chessie System to run a series of excursions behind former Reading 2101 in 1977 and 1978. When locomotive 2101 was damaged in a roundhouse fire, Rowland was compensated with Chesapeake & Ohio 4-8-4 614, which returned to service in 1980 to lead the Chessie Safety Express.
In 1985, Rowland again used 614 to gather data for a proposed coal-powered locomotive called the ACE 3000. That project never took off, but it resulted in an impressive month of steam-powered coal trains through West Virginia’s New River Gorge in the middle of winter. In the late 1990s, C&O 614 led a series of successful excursions between Hoboken, N.J., and Port Jervis, N.Y., on New Jersey Transit. Those would turn out to be Rowland’s last act with 614, and the engine would spend the next quarter century out of service.
Rowland made multiple attempts in the 1990s and 2000s to replicate the success of the Golden Spike Limited and American Freedom Train, but none of those efforts ever took off. Among them were the 21st Century Limited to mark the turn of the century, the Yellow Ribbon Express to honor veterans after September 11, the Greenbier Presidential Express to bring people to the famous West Virginia resort, and a second American Freedom Train to celebrate the upcoming Semiquincentennial. In 2000 and 2001, he also led the short-lived Pacific Wilderness Railway on Vancouver Island.
In November 2024, Rowland sold C&O 614 to RJD America, a private company that plans to restore the locomotive to operation. In June, the locomotive was moved from its long-time home in Clifton Forge, Va., to the Strasburg Rail Road, where work on it has since begun. Rowland was along for the ride.
—Railfan & Railroad Staff
