Chattanooga, TN: Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum

Grand Junction Station: (3D Satellite, 11,212 photos!) 

East Chattanooga Restoration Shop: (Satellite) The destination of their frequent train ride, Missionary Ridge.

Turntable Demonstration: (Satellite)

Delano, TN: (Satellite) They run some of their longer excursions, Hiwassee Loop and Copperhill, from this parking lot.

They also provide longer excursions from Grand Junction Station on the former Central of Georgia railroad to Chickamauga and Sommerville.

There are photos of their excursion trains on a bridge and in a tunnel.

"Chattanooga welcomed its first rail line with the arrival of the Western and Atlantic Railroad in 1850. A few years later, in 1858, the East Tennessee, Virginia, and Georgia Railroad also arrived in Chattanooga....Railroads like the Southern Railway also made generous donations of obsolete rail cars to museums like TVRM, expanding their collections and the story the museum could tell. In addition, Southern Railway donated the original East Tennessee, Virginia, and Georgia roadbed (absorbed into the Southern Railway System in 1894) on which TVRM could operate. TVRM’s passenger trains run on the historic route, which includes Missionary Ridge Tunnel, completed in 1858 and on the National Register of Historic Places.  The tunnel is the primary reason TVRM runs on the 3-mile section of the former Southern Railway. As railroad equipment grew too large to pass through and the single-track tunnel became a traffic jam for an otherwise double-track railroad, Southern Railway abandoned the 3-mile portion of the line and built a new section around the end of Missionary Ridge, avoiding the tunnel altogether." [tvrail-about]

Grand Junction. Note the station peaking through the trees on the right.

Street View, Jun 2018

East Chattanooga. The turntable is out-of-frame to the right.

Street View, Apr 2019

The Grand Junction Station was purpose built for the museum.

Markus Klenle, Oct 2021

Digitally Zoomed

They obviously run trains to the North Pole because they have a North Pole Station.

Photo, Oct 2022 via North Pole Limited

 

Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum Steam Locomotives posted
4501 and Southern Railway FP7 No. 6133 sit at Grand Junction during Railfest 2014.
Photo by Caleb Samples

Note that in 1976, Grand Junction Station had yet to be built. They must have been running their trains from their East Chattanooga facility. That explains why their restoration shops are currently located there. It is nice to see that their business was strong enough to support the Grand Junction Station expansion. I have not been able to find a date for the construction of the new station, but it does appear on a Mar 1997 Global Earth image.

1976 Chattanooga and East Chattanooga Quads @ 24,000

These topo maps show the origianl Southern route to the east that TVRM now uses. It also shows that L&N went further north before turning east so that it could follow the Chickamauga Creek valley out of town. I included the two yards in the lower left because they have changed a lot.

1936 Chattanooga and 1935 East Chattanooga Quads @ 24,000

Southern already had a route that went North, so it was easy to add a route that went east up by the Chickamauga Creek.

1958 Chattanooga and East Chattanooga Quads @ 24,000

Turning my attention to the Delano originated rides.

Hiwassee, click route Maps

"This 5-hour round trip takes you to the top of the famous Hiwassee Loop, where the tracks cross over themselves as they corkscrew up the mountain near Farner, Tennessee. There are only 6 of these loops in North America and this is the only one ever East of the Mississippi River." [Hiwassee]

1957 Farmer Quad @ 24,000