This 1953 photo features the northbound Dixie Flyer, a famous passenger train that passed through Chattanooga on its route from Chicago and St. Louis to Florida and back.
Train expert Justin Strickland, the author of the book “Chattanooga’s Terminal Station,” was able to identify the train by noting the time and date of the photo and comparing it to known train schedules from 1953 – a fact verified by other train scholars, he said.
History notes that the Dixie Flyer operated from 1892 to 1965. The Chattanooga leg of the Flyer’s operation was as part of the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway, which began in the 1840s and eventually merged with L&N Railway.
This photo is part of the EPB collection of images at ChattanoogaHistory.com, a website devoted to preserving vintage photographs of the Chattanooga area.
Sam Hall, curator of the website, said the position of the train in the photograph places it “approximately in the middle” of today’s TVA complex.