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Yes, the little engine began its life where it rolls today, but made a trek to Virginia and nearly ended up in California. Gene Autry Nearly Owned It.
Had it not been for Hurricane Hazel hitting the Shenandoah Valley, the Dollywood theme park may not exist today in the Great Smoky Mountains of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. And all that’s because of the little engine that could, Ol’ No. 12, the famed Tweetsie.
First, rewind the railroad tracks to the early 1900s, when the East Tennessee & Western North Carolina Railroad connected Johnson City, Tennessee, to North Carolina’s High Country.
Engine No. 12 pulled train cars through the Doe River Gorge and across the rocky terrain along the Tennessee-North Carolina border. And it ran on a path that later became known as the Tweetsie Trail, a rails-to-trails project linking Johnson City to Elizabethton in northeast Tennessee.
Folks called the ET&WNC railroad a nickname—“Eat Taters and Wear No Clothes.” And they called the shrill of the engine, No. 12, the “Tweetsie,” as an ode to the tweeting sound that the whistle seemed to blow.
When the railroad stopped running in 1950, the engine was acquired by some investors who had it shipped north to a farm near Harrisonburg, Virginia, where it was put in the service of the short-lived Shenandoah Central Railroad in 1953.
But damage from Hurricane Hazel wrecked the operation in 1954, and No. 12 was nearly shipped to California to become the life-size toy train of cowboy Gene Autry. But shipping the locomotive cost too much. So Autry gave up his purchase rights, and the engine became the property of the Robbins family of North Carolina.
The Robbins clan came up with a plan: Create the Tweetsie Railroad, a theme park just off the Blue Ridge Parkway at Blowing Rock, North Carolina. It opened on July 4, 1957, and became a favorite place for families anxious to meet real-life cowboys walking the Main Street of a make-believe western town.
What’s not make-believe is that antique locomotive is still snorting steam and is still powered by coal, just as it was when it first started operating in 1917.
By the early 1960s, Tweetsie Railroad proved so popular that the Robbins family opened another theme park, Rebel Railroad, that ultimately grew into the sprawling Dollywood, named for superstar Dolly Parton. Even so, Tweetsie Railroad remains an icon, staging shows with cowboys and Indians along the railroad while also providing rides and a petting zoo in the park.
The story above is from our January/February 2020 issue.
