For quite a few years, steam excursions from Alexandria to Charlottesville, Virginia over the Southern Railway (and later Norfolk Southern) were annual occurrences. This trip in 1979 was a little different from the others. Chartered by the NRHS for its National Convention, the southbound train operated over a C&O routing. Operating over the Southern main line where the C&O had trackage rights from Alexandria to Orange, the train diverged to the Southern-owned, C&O-leased line to Gordonsville, where it joined the original Doswell-Charlottesville C&O main line. Here the train passes through bucolic Virginia countryside near Cismont on the old C&O main.
