Tweetsie Railroad, North Carolina - July 1969
I have four slide scans from 1969 featuring the Tweetsie Railroad, located on US 321 between Boone and Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Wikipedia tells us Grover Robbins, an entrepreneur from Blowing Rock, North Carolina... bought the locomotive (No. 12, more about that in a minute) in August, 1955. Robbins' plan was to bring the locomotive and rolling stock back to its original home in the Blue Ridge Mountains, initially as an excursion railroad. After restoration at the Southern Railway shops in Hickory, NC, the No. 12 locomotive would soon become the centerpiece of the new "Tweetsie Railroad" tourist attraction.
Look at those beautiful green hills! One mile of track was constructed near Blowing Rock, North Carolina and on July 4, 1957, the locomotive made its first public trip over the line. In 1958, the track was extended to a 3-mile loop around the mountain, and the trains at Tweetsie Railroad have traveled that circuit ever since.
The name "Tweetsie" was given to the original ET&WNC by area residents as a verbal acronym of its initials, but also referred to the "tweet" of the locomotive whistles that echoed through the mountains. The nickname stuck with the railroad and its trains and became more identifiable than the railroad's official ET&WNC name.
And finally, a photo of the magnificent locomotive No. 12! I'm so glad that this was saved, and not sent to the scrapyard. Coal-fired steam locomotive No. 12 is the only surviving narrow-gauge engine of the East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad (ET&WNC). Built in 1917 by the Baldwin Locomotive Works, No. 12 is a 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge 4-6-0 coal-fired locomotive that ran from 1918 to 1940 carrying passengers and freight over the ET&WNC's 66-mile (106.2 km) line through the Appalachian Mountains from Johnson City, Tennessee to Boone, North Carolina.
I hope you have enjoyed your visit to the Tweetsie Railroad in North Carolina!
9 comments:
In the first pic, I'm having trouble separating the living guests from the inanimate mannequins.
I wonder where they store all the coal to fill the tender? And do they shovel the coal into the firebox by hand? Or maybe it has some sort of automatic feed?
3) Now we know where Shiny Boy's horse went! North Carolina! (Or Tennessee.)
4) It really is a beautiful engine; I love the color scheme.
We never know what we're gonna get on Anything Goes Saturday. Thanks, Major.
I want to ride the Tweetsie!
Is that a "Skyway" ride up there on the hill, in the last photo?
This place is on my bucket list.
This was taken when #12 was still sporting a faux balloon stack, added to emphasize the Wild West theme of the park. It has since been returned to it’s original appearance.
TM!, yes - that is a chairlift. It was added in 1961.
Thanks again, Major!
Neat little railroad, funny name though.
Is coal still available for fuel, or will the engine be converted to run on French fry grease like DLRR?
There appear to be two versions of Shiny Horse, gray in photo 1 and brown in photo 3. Or is this a trick of the light?
Fun pics today, Major, thank you.
JG
JB, mannequins and guests should live together in peace and harmony. I once toured a steam locomotive that used an Archimedes Screw to feed coal from the tender to the boiler, no idea if that’s how they do it for the Tweetsie RR though. I thought maybe that horse had accidentally imbibed a bottle of shoe polish, which would explain the expression! And it’s true, you never know what you’re gonna get!
TokyoMagic!, hmm, I didn’t even notice that, but it does look like a Sky Ride of some kind!
Chuck, I generally like balloon stacks, but in this case I think the original look is better. Thanks for the info on the chair lift!
JG, hey, if french fry oil works, I’m OK with it. It’s not like I’m so in love with coal exhaust. But I know what you mean. I am sure you are right about multiple shiny horses, they must thrive in North Carolina.
I would also love to visit here one day. It looks similar to Dollywood in its Rebel Railroad days before it turned into a major theme park. There's also a primitive little dark ride called Mouse Mine where they simply park you in front of a day-glo scene for two minutes!
@ Andrew-
I wonder if the lyrics were penned by the Cheese Board-? Too crazy. Thanks for sharing.
JG, yeah I noticed the two different shiny horses as well. But only one of them can be Shiny Boy's horse!
Major, I almost made a shoe polish joke in my comment above. Although in my shiny horse joke, the polish was gonna be applied topically rather than taken orally. Orally is funnier!
Andrew, thanks for the link. I notice that the Mine Mice have the requisite four (4) fingers like so many animated (or semi-animated) characters. Also, we see that Skyway ride near the beginning of the video. The 'gondolas' look sort of like mountain shacks; clever.
Occasionally this thing will happen where one of the blind spots in my good eye will hit a longer word, and my brain will try to fill in the missing letters before I can pan over them, and right now it turned "Grover Robbins" into "Grave Robbers." And I was a little bummed that I didn't get to see pictures of the Wild West amusement park built by grave robbers. (I guess Walter Knott and his real repurposed tombstones will have to do.)
"...mannequins and guests should live together in peace and harmony."
At my mother's for Christmas, I found a bunch of old pictures of the two mannequins I used to have in my living room. They fell apart in a damp storage unit years ago, so I was so tickled to have a reminder of those days when mannequins and humans knew how to coexist peacefully.
This place is on my bucket list, too. These pictures are awesome.
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