All aboard the 250th! M&E’s Red, White and Blue No. 26 rolls onto the rails in Morristown

By Kristen Neymarc

The Morristown & Erie Railway’s new America 250 locomotive is not headed for a display case.

No. 26, unveiled this month at the railroad’s Morristown engine house, is an in-service freight engine — a working locomotive now wearing a red, white and blue tribute to the nation’s 250th birthday.

And it is expected to keep rolling long after the Fourth of July.

M&E is a Morristown-based freight railroad. In railroad terms, it is a short line: A smaller local railroad that serves customers along its route and connects them to the larger rail network.

Chuck Jensen, M&E’s CEO and president, said the company traces its roots back about 130 years and is the second-oldest continuously operating short-line railroad in the United States.

Many local families may know M&E through excursions associated with the Whippany Railway Museum or the Polar Express holiday trains.

Before its America 250 makeover, Jensen said, the 248,000-pound locomotive wore black paint from its Southern Railway past. M&E repainted it in-house, using a red, white and blue design created by Superintendent Matt Phalon. The job cost about $40,000.

“It costs a lot to repaint an engine,” Jensen said. “It is not an everyday thing.”

For Jensen, the tribute makes sense: A railroad with deep Morristown roots, in a town so closely tied to Washington and the revolution, had an obvious reason to join the America 250 celebration. Painting No. 26, he said, was a way for the railroad to celebrate the anniversary with the people and communities it serves.

No. 26 also is part of a larger rail tradition. Jensen said he believes about 50 locomotives across the country are getting America 250 paint schemes, following a Bicentennial-era custom from 1976, when railroads celebrated the nation’s 200th birthday with patriotic engines.

At the Whippany Railway Museum, that earlier moment is already on display: Its model railroad includes a model American Freedom Train and Bicentennial-era red, white and blue locomotives, along with a display about the American Freedom Train, the patriotic exhibition train that crossed the country for the Bicentennial.

The public will have several chances to see No. 26, though not always on a fixed schedule. It is in active freight service, mostly circulating between Morristown and Whippany, so residents may simply spot it at work if they happen to be watching at the right time.

Jensen said the locomotive also is expected to appear about once a month at the Whippany Railway Museum and will be added to the Polar Express holiday trains. Rail enthusiasts may sometimes be able to arrange a closer look at M&E’s Morristown engine house, when No. 26 is not out working.