Frank, the Virginian, C&O, and N&W were all big coal-haulers in the Appalachians, and had some of the most powerful freight locomotives in the Eastern US for moving those long, heavy coal strings over the mountains.
You may have noticed the unusually long firebox on that Pennsy 2-10-2. The Pennsy and the Reading were notable as the "Anthracite roads," that burned the harder, cleaner, but cooler-burning anthracite coal instead of the otherwise-near-universal bituminous. The extra-large fireboxes for the hard coal are generally called 'Belpaire fireboxes' for man responsible for developing them, who worked for the Pennsy. The Pennsylvania in fact advertised itself as 'The road that anthracite built,' and 'The standard railroad of America' because it tried to set the pace of technology and engineering practice, for instance throughout much of its history the standard for mainline rail on the PRR was 10% or greater more than the average in use on the other Class 1 railroads, i.e. the PRR was using 180# rail as its standard when the average elsewhere was 150#-160#.
I do remember seeing steam locomotives, just barely; PRR actually, in the late 50s. I do remember on a trip to north of Chicago that my Dad and Uncle (Who lived in the area) took me down one night to await the passage of a streamliner, on its highballing departure from the north Chicago yards, which I realized later was the Hiawatha. I also remember hearing the local switcher's crew at night in my own southern Indiana town, they were maybe a mile away, working the set-outs for the scheduled train to pick up the next day.
