An intricately designed model of the Tweetsie line—once running from Johnson City, Tennessee, to Cranberry, North Carolina—chugged into the new location of the Johnson City Railroad Experience.
Photo Above: The Tweetsie model at the Johnson City Railroad Experience has grown with relocation from ETSU.
“We’re up and operational, but we still have some work to do,” says Fred Alsop, director of the museum.
For 16 years, model railroads rolled inside the train museum’s former location at the nearby campus of East Tennessee State University. Its official name—the George L. Carter Railroad Museum—honors a university benefactor and railroad magnate, George L. Carter of Carroll County, Virginia.
“We’re known across the country with our little Tweetsie Railroad,” says Alsop.
Officially, Carter’s name is still on the museum’s paperwork, though Alsop figures the new name—and downtown location —matches the expanded “experience” that starts with a seven-minute introductory film.
Already dozens of feet long, the Tweetsie model is now being expanded to showcase Johnson City, Alsop says. “We were not able to do our hometown until now. We’ve got a much bigger gallery space for it.”
That gallery includes a library of 3,000 railroad books plus train memorabilia and more models, like Knoxville, Tennessee, and a different scale version of Johnson City that had been built for a restaurant called Tupelo Honey.
Still, it’s the Tarheel and Tennessee towns on the Tweetsie line that keep studying a layout with the line’s five tunnels, built to scale, Alsop says. “And it’s big enough that it takes you a while to walk around and see it all.”
The museum is open Tuesday to Saturday. Admission fees vary. johnsoncityrailroadexperience.org. 423-631-5273.
The story above first appeared in our March / April 2025 issue.
