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Norfolk and Western 475

preserved American 4-8-0 locomotive (N&W class M)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 25, 2026
Entity authorityQ6951241 ↗
Source-derived summary

Norfolk and Western 475 is a 4-8-0 "Twelve-wheeler" type steam locomotive, built in June 1906 by the Baldwin Locomotive Works (BLW) as part of the Norfolk and Western Railway's (N&W) first order of M Class, Nos. 375–499. It was first assigned to haul freight trains on the N&W mainline before being reassigned to branch line duties on the Blacksburg Branch in the 1920s.

Retired from N&W revenue service in 1959, No. 475 was sold to various different owners in Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Iowa until 1991 when it was purchased and restored by the Strasburg Rail Road (SRC) in Strasburg, Pennsylvania, where it currently runs tourist excursion trains in the Pennsylvania Dutch countryside. Since then, No. 475 became the only 4-8-0 locomotive operating in North America and the oldest operating steam locomotive on the SRC. It was also featured in the 2000 feature-length film Thomas and the Magic Railroad.

In 2010, 2017, and 2019, No. 475 was temporarily backdated to resemble its extinct sister locomotive No. 382 for Lerro Productions' Virginia Creeper photo charter runbys, paying homage to O. Winston Link's photography work.

Editorial summary

“Norfolk and Western 475” enters the record as preserved American 4-8-0 locomotive (N&W class M). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Norfolk, Western and preserved can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1906, 1959, 1991, 2000—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Norfolk, Western and preserved.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Norfolk and Western 475” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Norfolk, Western and preserved provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6951241. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1906, 1959, 1991 and 2000.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Norfolk and Western 475 primary sources, Norfolk and Western 475 archive and Norfolk research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Norfolk and Western 475” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.