East Chattanooga TVRM Depot - Chattanooga, TN
Posted by: ggmorton
N 35° 03.685 W 085° 15.025
16S E 659542 N 3881252
A replica train depot which is a part of the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum in Chattanooga, TN.
Waymark Code: WM13KKM
Location: Tennessee, United States
Date Posted: 01/01/2021
Views: 3
This depot was built about 1977. It is the companion to the Grand Junction Depot. Each of these two depots make up the end points of the local train ride called Missionary Ridge at the museum.
"In 1970, the museum opened a new permanent facility in East Chattanooga to the public. At the time of its opening, there were no structures on site, although volunteers had constructed a railyard for the storage and repair of equipment and had rebuilt the abandoned rail line through the Whiteside Tunnel. The reconstructed line ended at Tunnel Boulevard as the original bridge over this road had been removed some years earlier.
With the reconstructed rail line, the museum had the ability to produce a small amount of income operating a heritage railroad by running passenger excursion trains through Whiteside Tunnel (commonly referred to as Missionary Ridge Tunnel).
Additional income was derived from mainline excursions operated biannually via the Southern Railway's Steam Program. The birth of the Southern Railway's Steam Program was brought about by Paul Merriman and TVRM, when, in 1964, Merriman purchased the former Southern Railway 4501 from the Kentucky & Tennessee Railway in Stearns, Kentucky for $5,000. The program began in 1966 when the freshly restored 4501 emerged from a 2 years long restoration which had been done at Lucey Boiler Company in Chattanooga. After many volunteer hours by TVRM members as well as paid Lucey Boiler employee work, the 4501 began roaming all over the Southern Railway System delighting onlookers and passengers everywhere.
After years of hard work and much financial discipline, in 1977 TVRM finally built the long needed bridge over Tunnel Boulevard. The Southern Railway then donated an additional mile and a half (2.4 km) of abandoned rail line. The next major task undertaken was to build the East Chattanooga Depot. This depot is a reconstruction of a typical small town depot of the 1920s. At the East Chattanooga facility, a repair shop and a turntable were added to provide facilities for locomotive repair and maintenance."
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