Photos by Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

Two cranes were used to load a 66-ton locomotive, which had sat still at a former Roanoke scrap yard for five decades, onto a transport trailer.

Three-year-old Bryce Simpson — held by his aunt, Camilla Cabaniss, and joined by his grandmother, Donna Caldwell (left) — watches the steam engine get loaded onto a trailer. Caldwell said that "this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

The new owner expects to spend about $70,000 to transport and refurbish the 105-year-old Norfolk & Western Railway steam engine.

Gently.

That's how you lift a 66-ton locomotive. And that's how you place it on a highway transport trailer.

Tightly.

That's how you lash it down before heading into traffic.

Before 50 spectators, a crew completed most of those steps Tuesday to extract a historic steam engine from a 50-year resting place in a former Roanoke scrap yard and prepare it for shipment to Ohio.

"Whew!" exclaimed Terry Byrne of Lexington, Ohio, the engine's new owner, after the lift.

The transport is scheduled to leave this morning for Bellville, Ohio, where Byrne plans to restore the 105-year-old machine.

Byrne plans to use it in a railroad-themed restaurant that could open next year. One menu item will be a "choo-choo" burger, joked Byrne, who also intends to give Roanoke credit for the gift on historical signage at his eatery.

The engine, Norfolk & Western Railway steam engine No. 917, was given to Byrne by Virginia Scrap Iron and Metal Co. in Roanoke, which is winding down its affairs on South Jefferson Street to make way for Carilion Clinic's expanding medical and business campus.

Byrne said he expects to spend about $70,000 on the move and engine reconstruction, a price that the Virginia Museum of Transportation in Roanoke was unable to afford.

The museum had had rights to the engine and still has its eye on several remaining pieces of railroad equipment available at the yard.

Spectators stood on the Jefferson Street bridge and at a scrap yard fence watching as two cranes and crew lifted the rust-coated engine from a siding and set it down on a truck bed.

"She's not rusted to the rails," said rail fan Richard Jenkins as the train rose from the track without difficulty.

In spite of the engine's having sat on the same spot since 1950, it came free cleanly and quietly.

A passing train honked twice as if to congratulate Byrne on his acquisition.

Others shook his hand.

Clifton Jones, a retired engine mechanic at Norfolk & Western who was with the company for 32 years, identified the steam engine as one that predated the accessory of an automatic coal loader.

"The coal was shoveled in by hand for the boiler," said Jones, 83, of Roanoke County.

The boiler produced steam that drove pistons that cranked arms that turned the wheels.

Norfolk & Western discontinued use of steam locomotives, becoming the last large railroad to do so, in 1960. Diesel electric technology is dominant today.

Most in the crowd knew the engine is headed out of Roanoke for good, provoking a few expressions of regret.

"Roanoke's too stupid to hang onto these things themselves," said Mike Overacker of Roanoke.

But others were pleased to know the engine will have a new life -- even if it's in a spot 400 miles north of here.

"I'm glad they're salvaging something out of this," Neil Victorine of Roanoke said. "That's history."

Cranes picked up the engine in two single-strand slings, shifted it less than 50 feet and set it down on a truck, all in about five minutes. The crew then applied chains.

"That was just a smooth, smooth operation," Byrne said afterward.

He lowered his estimate of its weight from 75 tons to 66 tons Tuesday based on information from the crane operators.

Ed Mooneyham, vice president of the area chapter of the National Railway Historical Society, was on hand to observe and to invite other spectators to take a ride on a chapter train at the Roanoke Industrial Center.

"Railroad preservation here in the valley, it's not dead," Mooneyham said.

He offered Byrne what he said was the pattern the railroad used for casting the number that went on the front of engine No. 917 in brass.

The Byrne train's 917 is gone, so Byrne took him up on it.