Chattanooga Choo Choo
N 35° 02.235 W 085° 18.384
16S E 654481 N 3878484
Made famous in song, Chattanooga became a train town.
Waymark Code: WM1538
Location: Tennessee, United States
Date Posted: 01/17/2007
Views: 56
The song was written by the team of Mack Gordon and Harry Warren while traveling on the Southern Railway's "Birmingham Special" train. The song tells the story of travelling from New York City to Chattanooga. However, the inspiration for the song was a small, wood-burning steam locomotive of the 2-6-0 type which belonged to the Cincinnati Southern Railroad, which is now part of the Norfolk Southern Railway system. That train is now a museum artifact (see below). From 1880, most trains bound for America's South passed through the southeastern Tennessee city of Chattanooga, often on to the super-hub of Atlanta. The Chattanooga Choo Choo did not refer to any particular train, though some have incorrectly asserted that it referred to Louisville and Nashville's Dixie Flyer or the Southern Railway's Crescent Limited.
Today, one of the original trains has pride of place in Chattanooga's former Terminal Station. Once owned and operated by the Southern Railway, the station was saved from demolition after the withdrawal of passenger railway service in the early 1970s, and it is now part of a 30 acre (12 hectare) resort complex, including the Choo-Choo Holiday Inn and numerous historical railway exhibits. For a premium, guests can stay in half of a restored passenger railway car (availability varies). Dining at the complex includes the Gardens restaurant in the Terminal Station itself, The Station House (which is housed in a former baggage storage) and the "Dinner on the Diner" which is housed in an early dining car. The city's other historic station, Union Station, was demolished in 1973 and the site is now a large office building, even though parts of the station predated the Civil War. In addition to the railroad exhibits at "the Choo Choo", there are further exhibits at Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum, which is in the suburb of East Chattanooga.
The reputation given to the city by the song also lent itself to making Chattanooga the home of the National Model Railroad Association. In addition, the athletics mascot at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga is a rather menacing-looking anthropomorphized mockingbird named Scrappy, who is dressed as a railroad engineman and is sometimes depicted at the throttle of a steam locomotive.
The Dixie Flyer originally was a named train that did pass through and stop in Chattanooga on its run from Chicago to Miami. That railroad, until 1957 was the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railroad (NC&StL). The NC&StL was merged into L&N in 1957. Now it is part of CSX.
The Southern Crescent did not go through Chattanooga, but there were at least three other Southern Railway trains that ran through Chattanooga direct to Washington and on to New York without changing trains. There was a change of locomotives between Bristol, Tennessee, and Lynchburg, Virginia; Norfolk and Western Railway operated the train on that portion, turning it back over to the Southern at Lynchburg. The named trains on this route were the Pelican, Birmingham Special and Tennessean.
Visit Instructions:
To post a visit log to this waymark you need to visit and write about the actual physical location. Any pictures you take at the location would be great, as well.