Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum Keeps Locomotive Heritage Alive
By Chattanooga Magazine Staff

The train hisses clouds of steam and starts to roll forward, rocking gently with a clickety-clack. From the locomotive up front comes a long, low, plaintive sound, more like a moan than a whistle. For train enthusiasts, it's a siren song, and it's easy to see why they keep coming back to Chattanooga's Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum to ride the trains.

Riding old steam trains is an otherworldly experience, one that doesn't exist in the modern world of high-speed Interstate highways and 150-mile-per-hour express trains. The world has outgrown the old trains, but they are still here, chugging away as though it were 1910 instead of 2010. When the train emits that sorrowful whistle, Steve Freer smiles.

"This is the same experience someone would have had 100 years ago," Freer says. Freer is the membership and marketing coordinator at the TVRM, although he, or "Railroad Steve," has worn many hats during his time at the TVRM. Freer started at his current marketing position in 1999, where he does a little bit of everything, from coordinating events to conducting trains. He knows all the conductors, the volunteers, and the maintenance workers, and greets them all by name as he walks through the station.

The crew of today's trip is refreshingly young. Conductor Trevor Lanier is a recent history graduate, and one of the train engineers is a student at UTC. Along with a 15-year-old summer volunteer, they make up the kind of crew Freer wants to see more of- young, knowledgeable, and enthusiastic about history and old trains. Knowledge of the steam trains is dying out, and according to Freer, the younger generations need to "keep the history alive." At 45, Freer acknowledges a life-long love for trains. In 1971, his father helped rebuild the TVRM tracks, and he would bring seven-year-old Freer and his brother along.

"We'd play or observe or sometimes serve as "gophers," he says. "I just never left."

The TVRM began in 1961, when Robert Soule, Paul Merriman and a number of other Chattanoogans decided to do something about the upsetting disappearance of steam engines. After about eight years of collecting old train cars, locomotives and parts, often donated by rail companies, the TVRM was formed.

The train car windows are suddenly pitch black as the train snakes through the Missionary Ridge Tunnel. The darkness outside the windows hides how close the tunnel walls really are-the narrow tunnel is just wide enough for a train, with about 18 inches of space on either side. The 986-foot-long tunnel dates back to the pre-Civil War years, and was the site of one of the battles that ended a Confederate siege in 1863.

As the Chattanooga area grew after the Civil War, the tracks were expanded but the tunnel proved a difficult obstacle. Multiple trains all had to go through that narrow, one-lane tunnel, and it quickly became a bottleneck. Tired of trains sitting on the tracks waiting their turn to go through, Chattanooga soon redirected the tracks, and the tunnel was abandoned.

Years later, the founders of the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum acquired the land and rebuilt the tracks. The main line, the Missionary Ridge Local, extends six miles round-trip from Grand Junction Station, over Chickamauga Creek and through Missionary Ridge Tunnel to the East Chattanooga station, and then back again.

Visitors start at the 1890s-era Grand Junction Station, complete with original period benches, a barred ticket window, and dark wainscoting, as well as a gift shop and deli. The grounds outside are home to some of the special cars, like the Eden Isle, a 1917 private luxury car. The oldest piece at the TVRM is a steam engine built in 1891. Glossy black and red, it's every bit the locomotive that comes to mind when you think of the steam-puffing old-west trains in cowboy movies.

Freer says in the early years, the TVRM was more like a club for volunteer enthusiasts who drove trains on excursion trips. It wasn't the tourist attraction it is today. "Back then, it was a 50-cent ticket," Freer says. "And you could ride twice."

Just before the World's Fair came to Knoxville in 1982, the TVRM decided to build and expand in anticipation of a flood of visitors. With a million-dollar industrial development fund, the TVRM built the Grand Junction Station depot, the locomotive turntable, and the shop and repair complex.

The TVRM made ready to take on the crowds, but the project was a disappointment. The weather hadn't cooperated, slowing the construction, and by the time the World's Fair came around, the main station still looked like a construction zone. Worse, Chattanooga didn't see the influx of millions of visitors that had been projected. The museum went bankrupt, and for a time the effort seemed a waste, but the TVR pulled itself out of bankruptcy, and the misconceived project turned the museum into a major tourist attraction that draws about 90,000 visitors a year.

"If we hadn't developed, we probably wouldn't be where we are today," Freer says. The TVRM is now a $2-million-a-year attraction, with income supplied mostly by ticket sales, but also memberships and donations. In 2007, the TVRM was at its peak ridership with almost 100,000 visitors that year, but after the economy tanked, the passenger levels went down. The TVRM is holding steady now, but is working to supplement the ticket sales by providing freight service and storing extra freight cars for large companies.

Any additional funds go to repairing old cars or locomotives, but parts aren't easily located, and can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Finding someone with the knowledge to repair the locomotives is even more difficult and costly.

"We tell people we can't buy our parts at the local auto parts store," Freer says with a chuckle.

When Conductor Lanier gives visitors a tour of the repair shop, he explains that in the golden age of trains, a locomotive could be in and out of the shop in a month. In contrast, one of the locomotives in the shop today has been undergoing repairs for nearly a decade. Freer says that is exactly what the TVRM founders didn't want.

"They believed that if you have a locomotive stuffed and mounted, it's useless," Freer says. "They didn't want a locomotive graveyard."

The TVRM is trying hard not to let that happen, and is focusing on keeping its operating trains running. Groups of passengers can rent the luxurious Eden Isle or take various dinner car excursions. During 2008, the Christmas-season North Pole Limited trip drew 11,000 passengers, and the springtime Day Out with Thomas the Tank Engine is popular with families and children. Longer trips head to Chickamauga, Copperhill, and even as far as Summerville, Georgia.

"We're in the business of preserving, restoring, and operating historical trains," Freer says. "Keeping the history alive is the main thing."

Conductor Lanier calls "All Aboard!" With clouds of steam and that low, sorrowful whistle, the train pulls out of the station, giving passengers a taste of Chattanooga's history, and a future that includes these important trains.