Tennessee & North Carolina NG - 1962 et al

My parents were evangelical Baptist, so no smokin' or drinkin' meant my blue collar dad had a couple extra dollars to take us on driving vacations - most often in the US. Winter would wear on us and almost every Easter as a kid we would head south to the Bible Belt for a mini-holiday. The spring weather was beautiful, the Easter church services were inspirational, and I got to see a little bit of tourist line narrow gauge - as well as real shortline steam. How many of you saw these operations as well when you were kids.


In 1962, the Rebel Railroad in Pigeon Forge TN featured WP&Y Mikado #192. We usually visited too early in the season for things to be running, but sometimes we got lucky.






Tweetsie #12 in 1965




By 1965, #192 had been lettered for the Goldrush, Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg & Western.




My parents visited again in 1982 and by then #192 was lettered for Silver Dollar City. It must have been a little later in the year because it looks like the park is open and she's under steam. Thank goodness she had lost that terrible 1960s fake stack, and was painted black. The line is of course Dollywood today.




My wife and I haven't visited this region in a lot of years, and we should probably take a trip down south to see these lines again.

Cheers,
Ralph



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/20/2020 10:32PM by tgbcvr.