In today’s edition of Appalachian Moments we take a ride on the little steam engine that could, but nearly didn’t!
Generations of families, including mine (young Thomas in the photo), know old engine number 12 at Tweetsie Railroad, but let’s backtrack a moment. Tweetsie’s journey to becoming a cultural icon was nearly derailed several times after it was built in far-away Philadelphia in 1917.
The East Tennessee and Western North Carolina railroad began operation just after the Civil War. Its main purpose was to move iron ore from the Cranberry mines in what is now Avery County and lumber from the mountains of the High Country to Johnson City and beyond.
Tweetsie was just the ticket for folks in Boone because in 1919 tracks were extended to service that area.
Locals called it the railroad with a heart because train personnel often ran errands for their mountain friends and even let them ride for free during the Great Depression.
However, August of 1940 changed everything. It was said that the north side of Grandfather Mountain looked like a massive waterfall and the deluge literally turned the tracks sideways into what looked like a picket fence through the river bottoms in Foscoe.
Tweetsie never returned to Boone and just 10 years later all narrow gauge railroad service ended as improved roads and highways became the main arteries of transporting goods.
Somehow there was light at the end of the tunnel for Engine number 12 even as all of her other dozen steam mates didn’t make the grade and ended up on the scrap heap.
She was purchased by railroad enthusiasts and moved to Harrisonburg, Virginia in 1950 to pull the Shenandoah Central, but that dream was also sidetracked by a flood, courtesy of Hurricane Hazel.
The Singing Cowboy Gene Autry then bought Old Number 12 and was engineering a move to California to feature the train in the film industry when Grover Robbins, junior came aboard.
Robbins wasn’t just blowing smoke. He wanted to bring Tweetsie back to North Carolina. The purchase price was just one dollar, a pretty good deal you might say, but a quarter million dollar restoration and the prospect of moving it to Blowing Rock via the highways and byways, threatened to sabotage his ambitious plans.
But on July 4th, 1957 Old number 12 celebrated Independence Day in a major way as Robbins opened the first-ever theme park in North Carolina: Tweetsie Railroad!
People from all over came back to listen to that familiar whistle echoing through the hills and hollers, to hear the train they had dubbed Tweetsie.
With the success of Tweetsie, Grover Robbins and his brother Harry knew they were on the right track and opened another railroad theme park called Rebel Railroad in Pigeon Forge, Tennesse.
Little did the Robbins Brothers know that they were laying the groundwork for what would later become Tennessee’s most-visited attraction.
You might know it better by its current name, that’s right, it’s now called Dollywood!
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