Tweetsie RR, Blowing Rock NC

How was it?

I used to live there for 4 years but didn't ride the train then. Many years ago my boys and I rode it when first visiting the area about 15 years ago..

I had driven around it but not ridden it years ago, and then about 3? years ago I

attended a convention in Hickory ((I was looking for hickory (wood) furniture in all

those warehouses to go with kitchen cabinets...not a stick of hickory in all those furniture warehouses in Hickory...I thought that was funny)) I ran around the area, over to tho Southern RR Museum and up to Blowing Rock, and rode the Tweetsie.

'Shame, not until I saw a video of the line - one that shares some scenery akin to the Durango and Silverton with it's canyon wall hugging  right of way, did I fully appreciate this railroad. 

That it is called "the Tweetsie" and it's engines are very colorful I think does the line a disservice.  True, it was known affectionately as "the Tweetsie" due to the whistles used and I believe at least one engine was painted reminiscent of Southern green.  Still, the line has all the mystique of an amusement park ride.

Would be nice to see it operated more like the DSNG and /or C&T and EBT.  At least perhaps a once a year railfan day painted up as East Tennessee and Wester North Carolina Railroad (ET&WNC) pulling all coaches and /or even a freight train (they could get a good deal on EBT's hopper cars).

Odd - how few photos from the line make it on line or into a railfan magazine.

Hope to get there one day soon.

/Mitch

Actually, the engines are quite handsome - green is fine, but all that red - the roof, the pilot, and ornamentation is what makes the historic engine seem more like an amusement park engine.

Looks like they DO have railfan events once per year in September.  They just need some additional narrow gauge stock, freight specifically.  I read one coach car is actually former EBT.  Are there other coaches on the roster is that the only one besides the open car multi color amusement park stock?

Here's a really good video from 2011.

Not sure if the line still runs through the canyons?

http://youtu.be/H4XJ2iOTIzs

/Mitch

More:

http://www.johnsonsdepot.com/crumley/cyhome.htm

A lot more!

/Mitch

ok, a bit of clarification is needed here.  The green paint IS authentic.  The ET&WNC copied the SR green-gold livery.  There's a bit more red than in revenue service, but the color is correct.  Don't even try and get them to do the 1940s era black paint.  It's been tried before, and unless someone is willing to pony up the money to do 2 full repaints for a one-day thing, it's just not going to happen.

As far as rolling stock is concerned, the one ex-EBT coach is the only authentic car there.  The EBT and ET&WNC passenger cars were identical.  They did have an ET&WNC combine, which was donated to the NC Transportation Museum years ago.  There were some open-air cars that Tweetsie used for railfan trips.  How close those are to the open-air cars at the Tweetsie theme park, I'm not exactly sure.  One of the original open-air cars did survive with the 12 and the combine, but I'm not sure if the Tweetsie tourist cars were copies of that or expanded versions

I wouldn't hold your breath on ever getting more cars either.  There simply isn't anywhere to store them on the current line.  A few years ago, there was a major property dispute that might have forced Tweetsie to relocate to a new site.  If that had happened, the option of acquiring more "authentic" rolling stock was possible.  As it is though, it appears everything has settled and Tweetsie will remain on the mountain for the forseeable future.

There are Railfan Weekends in September, but thanks to a couple of people who acted like idiots, you can't walk the line anymore, so the vast majority of the shots you see in that video cannot be done any more.  Very often, we are our own worst enemy.  For a few years, they even did repainting and put the 12 back into ET&WNC livery with the one ET&WNC passenger car.

note the ET&WNC paint on the 12 in the photo below.

Now, one other thing here.  There are two separate operations that are not related.  The Tweetsie Railroad theme park (with the 12 and ex-WP&Y 190) operates on a mountain top several miles south of Boone, NC.  That's not on the original right-of-way, and certainly doesn't have any D&S-style cliff hanging sections.

The other operation is the trackage through the Doe River Gorge near Hampton, TN.  This is the original Tweetsie right-of-way with about 2 miles of tracks that were installed in the late 1960s.  About half of that is operational today.  In the operable section, there is a tunnel and some D&S-style cliff hanging sections.  It really is quite spectacular.  This is owned by the Doe River Gorge Christian Camp, has no connection with the Tweetsie theme park, and since they are private, there are limited public days.  There was a steam engine there at one time for a couple of years, but they are currently diesel, and not sure what the status is of ever getting steam back.

Those two segments are basically all that is left of the original ET&WNC.  There is a bit of the railroad left in Johnson City, TN (including the original enginehouse) that operates now as the East Tennessee Railway.  Very little of the ET&WNC trackage remains, as the line from Johnson City to Elizabethton (about 5 miles from Hampton and the Doe River Gorge) has been pulled as is being converted to a bike trail.  The majority of the ET switching operations are on what was the old Clinchfield mainline through Johnson City.  The Clinchfield built a bypass around Johnson City in the late 1960s, so CSX is on an entirely different track these days.

As nice as it would be, I wouldn't hold your breath on seeing the 12 make a return visit to the Doe River Gorge any time in the near future either.

Kevin

I was startled by mention of "canyons", as the only part of the Tweetsie I saw was

the around in a circle hilltop ride.  I spent time searching for any Doe Valley evidence

but people asked including staffers in nearby parks professed to know nothing about

it, and I had read elsewhere that it was "private property", with no further elaboration.  This is the first I've heard of a second "tourist" railroad in the area.  It

did not look to me that they had much room for rolling stock on that hilltop.

The ET&WNC was known for an original bridge and track over or under a covered bridge or some such, that I have never seen a good photo of, if one exists?  Does one exist?  I can bet that bridge does not still exist.

Nice pics and great info - thanks Kevin! 

A friend gave me a copy of a DVD he had made featuring steam through the Gorge and I was intrigued not knowing such an operation ever existed. 

When you say those are the two segments remaining - do you mean instead, one segment through the gorge and one OPERATION at the park?  Is any of the right of way in the park original (and if so, did it connect to the gorge) or was it all laid new specifically for the amusement park?

What were the specifics of #12 (steam) even running through the Gorge?  Was it on loan?  Seems odd the state would not have pushed harder for a D&S type of operation to bring in tourist to the state.  Or that steam would've ever lost it's draw.  Then again... maybe it only seems odd to a steam enthusiast.

/Mitch

More info on the ET&WNC in regards to the Doe River Gorge Christian Camp:

http://trainweb.org/vrt/TurnerET&WNC/

They mention the rebuilding of the line but no mention of the line being able to handle the weight of #12.  When and how long was #12 in operation there?

/Mitch

Thought this was kind of funny -

"That had to be one hungry and thirsty goat"

http://www.tricities.com/news/...9b-d5a59fbeec8d.html

There are goats in TN??

Here's a photo from the link in thread above (http://www.johnsonsdepot.com/crumley/cyhome.htm):

/Mitch

There were two covered bridges on the ET&WNC.  There was a true covered bridge in the fields near Hampton, TN.  The abutments are all that are left and it's on private property.

here's a shot of it at the time...

http://www.johnsonsdepot.com/c...tour2b/coverdbrs.jpg

There was also what basically amounts to a covered bridge, but with track OVER the top of the bridge, rather than through it.  That is right beside highway 19 in the tight sections of the road between Elizabethton and Hampton also.  If you know where you are looking, you can see a little bit of where it was and the tunnel also.

Here are two shots of it...

http://www.johnsonsdepot.com/c...tour7/cabhampton.jpg

http://www.johnsonsdepot.com/c...bridges/covereds.jpg

 There are much better shots of it in some of the books.

btw, don't be surprised you didn't know about the Doe River Gorge operation.  It's not very well known even in North Carolina/TN.  Since the focus is a Christian day camp, they don't advertise in the railfan media.

It's a REALLY neat place though and going from the wide open valleys where the camp is through the tunnel into the tight confines of the gorge is just as dramatic as the entrance to the Durango & Silverton high line.  Once you go through that tunnel, you are in a whole other world.

Kevin

The Doe River Gorge line was rebuilt on the original ET&WNC right-of-way.  It is in operation (or at least the lower half of it is from the camp up to Pardee Point), but it is not a "tourist railroad" per se.  They do have public weekends however where they open up the camp and railroad.

The park ride was specifically built for the park.  The Tweetsie right-of-way into Boone has basically been obliterated over the years, and was probably mostly gone even at the time the park was constructed.  The Boone line extension only operated for 20 years before being washed out in floods in 1940.

The steam engine at the Doe River Gorge was a 2-4-0 from Opryland named the Rachel.  That engine is now in Texas.

See here...

http://www.johnsonsdepot.com/crumley/tour15.htm

There were brief considerations around 2000 about extending the railroad from Elizabethton through Hampton and the Doe River Gorge to about the TN/NC state line.  Since the Doe River Gorge section remains intact, as does another 5-8 miles east on what is now Railroad Grade Road, it wouldn't have been incredibly difficult to do.  The hardest part would have been rebuilding the 5 miles or so from Elizabethton to Hampton as the highway now pretty much took over the railroad space in some tight confines.  That would have restored about 85% of the narrow gauge line, leaving only about 10 miles or less to reach the 1950 end of track at Cranberry.  Unfortunately, the trail won out.

Kevin

Thank you, Zephyr, for that Turner link!

I just saw this link. Lots of good info about the ET&WNC here. My folks were born and raised in that area, when the 3-footer was still running (though neither of my parents recall seeing the NG trains, but do recall seeing into the 1960s, #s 207 and 208, now known as Southen RR 630 and 722). I walked part of the Doe River gorge in 1981 with several family members, from the other end of the gorge line with the twin bridges across the river. the old "Hillbilly world" tourist tracks were still in place then, right up to where the road started over the rest of the old ET grade. At that time, none of us realized trains had quit running there only a few years previously. The following year, we found ET&WNC coach # 23, then sitting abandoned as the "Tweetsie Diner" in newland, NC. Sadly, it burned in a fire later. Here I am, at age 12, standing outside it:

The rayon mill in Elizabethton had a Porter fireless 0-6-0 which ran in interchange with ET&WNC steam as early as 1936. It ran intil 1991 and is now on display outside town with the remains of one of the few existing 3-footer boxcars from the ET:

The gorge rivals anything seen on Colorado or New Mexico. I superimposed a 1930s shot from the exact same spot onto this photo I took at Pardee Point:

Bachmann makes good replicas of the ET ten-wheelers in On30. You can get 12 and 14 in the 1938-1942 green-gold paint, 11 and 12 in wartime black. Here is a gaggle of ET power on my ET&WNC layout, one one of these engines is soon to be re-numbered for # 9, the third engine they ran in the war years:

Nobody makes a good model of the types of coaches they used for commuter duty for the rayon mills, but an AMS coach makes a good stand in for their pre-war coaches:

My favorite recollection of the line back in the day was when a visitor in the cab asked to blow the whistle. The answer?

"I can't..were goin uphill!"