It's the first weekend of November, and that means its time for the Soulé Live Steam Festival and Meridian Railroad Museum Railfest. This year, Norfolk Southern has a 30th anniversary exhibit car that is interactive and showcases and past, present, and future of the railroad company. The Soulé Festival provides plenty of action, as our own Lindsey Hall discovered.

Jim McRae, president of the Soulé Museum, says, "Well, they can expect to see a lot of mechanical action. They can expect to see the original steam engines that were used like a hundred years ago, and this is what Soulé was all about. They manufactured Soulé engines, and this was the last manufacturing plant in America."

Not only do you get a chance to see history at the Soulé Steam Festival and at Railfest, you also get a chance to sit in a locomotive simulator and actually operate a train like a train engineer.

Jim Askew, a car inspector with Norfolk Southern, tells us, "We call it the NS Exhibit Car. It goes to different communities. NS has put this together to show the communities what Norfolk Southern and any railroad does for that community, what the railroad provides for our economy, what we literally do to make our living."

Both festivals will be open from 9am to 4pm on Saturday and both are free.