Train rides may return to Chattanooga Choo-Choo

Pardon me, but where’s the Chattanooga Choo-Choo?

That’s what Scottie Bridges wanted to know on Friday during his visit to the local landmark, which now serves now as a Holiday Inn hotel.

“I asked, ‘They got a train you can take?’” he said.

The answer now is no, but if the Atoka, Tenn., resident brings his family back to Chattanooga in a couple of years, they just might get their wish.

Chattanooga Mayor Ron Littlefield said Friday he wants to see the city make “substantial progress” toward bringing a passenger train back downtown by the end of his term next year.

Mr. Littlefield, who mentioned the goal in Thursday’s state of the city speech, said he would like to see the project completed “with reasonable cost and in a reasonable amount of time.”

“When people come to Chattanooga, they expect to see something like this, and it’s not here,” he said. “It just goes with the city.”

Mr. Littlefield said he is working with officials at the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum to try and get their steam engines to make trips from the museum’s main location on Cromwell Road downtown to the Chattanooga Choo-Choo.

The museum now offers the only passenger train rides in the surrounding area. Visitors can take a train from the museum on a short trip to Missionary Ridge or to Chickamauga, Ga., Summerville, Ga., or Copperhill, Tenn.

Because the museum, located off state Highway 153, is not near many of the popular downtown attractions, few tourists take advantage of the train rides, officials said.

Tim Andrews, president of the museum, said the organization ran passenger trains to the Choo-Choo for several years, but because they had to cross busy Norfolk Southern and CSX rail lines the routes became impractical.

Rerouting track or tunneling underneath it to avoid the commercial freight train tracks could cost anywhere from $4 million to $10 million, Mr. Andrews said.

“One of the issues is money,” he said. “We need to find a champion, someone who is interested in trains.”

Bill Sudderth, president of Chattanooga Land Co., serves on a committee set up by the Chattanooga Convention and Visitors Bureau to determine the next big attraction for the city.

He said the panel now is “on a fact-finding mission” and will make a report to the bureau in a month or two on the feasibility of the plan.

“We’re in the very early stages of looking at it,” he said.

Mr. Andrews said he thinks now is a good time to work on bringing a train downtown because there is growing interest in the idea.

“We’re always looking for the next big thing to put in our arsenal for bringing visitors to Chattanooga,” he said.

Amy Gray brought her two children, Ben, 8, and Chloe, 3, to Chattanooga to visit the Creative Discovery Museum and the Tennessee Aquarium. But the Franklin, Tenn., native, who stayed at the Choo-Choo hotel Friday night, said she would have enjoyed a ride on a train.

“You think of Chattanooga, you think of the riverfront, you think of the Choo-Choo, you think of trains,” she said.

Penelope Soule, marketing director for the railroad museum and daughter of its co-founder, Robert Soule, said she wants to help give tourists the “classic vintage Chattanooga experience” of riding a steam engine. She remains cautiously optimistic.

“We’re trying not to get our hopes up too fast,” she said.