The Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum in East Chattanooga will soon house the archive and headquarters of the L&N Historical Society, which had been located in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
This marks the second time an outside railroad archive has made the museum its final stop. In 2018, the Southern Railway Historical Association moved its archives to the building on Turntable Road, which the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum acquired and renovated in 2018 for just that purpose.
“There’s a fear that, as all of us are getting older, where is this stuff going to go?” said Tim Andrews, president of the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum. “This becomes a facility that can acquire, curate these materials and not worry about the family not knowing what it is and it ends up in a dumpster or for sale on eBay.”
David Orr, the vice president of the L&N Historical Society and a retired CSX executive, said the railroad museum in Chattanooga is the perfect place for their collection, which has outgrown its space.
“Our group assesses it as one of the premier railroad museums in the country, and getting better all the time,” Orr said.