WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND

WOYM: Old Gabriel, the Roanoke railroad shops whistle, sounds no more

Ray Cox Special to The Roanoke Times Oct 3, 2021



The Roanoke Times, File 2003

Among longtime local residents, a lively discussion is sure to ensue on what are considered to be the Roanoke Valley’s most notable icons. ... Lists will differ but it may be ventured that most will include two items. One is the Mill Mountain Star and the other is the steam whistle that trumpeted daily work shift changes at the old Norfolk Southern East End Shops.

Q: Whatever happened to the old Norfolk Southern whistle downtown that set Roanoke apart as a real railroad town?

Stefon Walker, Roanoke

A: The city is no longer a railroad town and the whistle no longer enjoys a workday schedule that sounded precisely at 7 a.m., 12 noon, 12:30 p.m., and 3:30 p.m.

Old Gabriel, as it was known from its first of several incarnations after being installed in 1883 at what was then known as the Norfolk & Western Roanoke Machine Works, may have sounded its last note.

Were you around to hear that most recent throaty toot, what you were listening to musically speaking was an inverted D-major seventh chord, composed of a D, then a high C sharp and ending with a low F sharp at the end descending down-scale to an A-major chord.

That brilliant piece of research comes courtesy of journalist Beth Macy, who heads up the long list of eminent writers and historians who have written about the whistle. Her 1996 piece for this paper may be considered the definitive work on Old Gabriel.

Few writers minced words.

The whistle is “as much a part of the Magic City as Mill Mountain itself,” read a story in the December 1934 issue of the Norfolk and Western Magazine. “What Big Ben is to London Old Gabriel is to Roanoke,” said a Roanoke Times report 55 years after the whistle first sounded.

So when was the last blast? Ken Miller, who curates the railroad’s archives for the Norfolk Southern Historical Society, believes it was sometime in 2020. ... “I didn’t hear it,” said Miller, adding he was going on reasonably respectable hearsay.

There is a YouTube video dated May 20, 2020, of the whistle going off but it is unclear whether the shot was live or filmed another day and uploaded later.



More information was sought from the Norfolk Southern public information office in Atlanta. No reply to a voicemail has been received so far.

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