Chapter 4: The One With The Stolen Train
I had originally planned on spending a full day in Atlanta. After all, there are plenty of attractions for a family to visit there and stay busy. But that pesky budget got in the way again.
I’d been looking at visiting both the
Georgia Aquarium (supposedly one of the largest and best in the world) and the
World of Coca-Cola. Both are big attractions, with the added bonus of being right next door to each other. That would most likely fill a day. We nixed the College Football Hall of Fame (we don’t follow the college game too closely) and the CNN Studios Tour (didn’t think Drew would do well on that one). Plus, I’d saved up Coke Rewards points for a long time. Most of the “rewards” you could get were junk, but I’d noticed that if you had a certain number of points, you could trade them in for free admission to the World Of Coca-Cola. So I’d thought to myself, “Self, if we ever go to Atlanta, we should cash in those points for free admission.” No problem!
Except when we were finally ready to visit Atlanta, Coke had unceremoniously dumped the rewards program, not bothered to send me a notification, and when I went to cash in the points they were all expired. I know you’re supposed to be refreshing, but that was decidedly uncool, Coke.
So, now if we were going to visit, we’d have to fork over $100+ for what is essentially a giant Coca-Cola commercial. Given a) the price tag, and b) my emotional disposition towards Coke at the moment, we made the decision to pass. Please do not point out my hypocrisy by detailing the amount of money I will be spending on Walt Disney Co. propaganda this summer.
It was slightly cheaper to purchase admission to the aquarium online in advance. Admission requires a timed entrance, and we ended up planning to visit in the afternoon. This left a morning to fill in the agenda as we traveled from Chattanooga down to Atlanta. What to do?
It was fellow DIS Dad Rob (
@GoofyIsAsGoofyDoes ) who reminded me of an attraction I’d had interest in visiting but had originally decided against when looking at spending the day in Atlanta. With the morning now open, it became the perfect stop along the way.
Right around 9:15 a.m., we pulled into the parking lot of the
Southern Museum of Civil War & Locomotive History in Kennesaw, Georgia.
This museum boasts a few exhibits on Civil War and railroad history in the mid-1800’s U.S., but its primary reason for existence is that it houses The General, a Civil War locomotive that played a part in one of the great (relatively) untold chapters of the U.S. Civil War. But we’ll get to that.
We paid our admission (note: AAA discount available!) and wandered the first couple of exhibits, showing off the standard uniforms, weapons, and tools of the time. Then we headed to the back of the building for the “Jolley Education Center”, a fancy term for what is basically a giant kids’ play area.
Those of you with kids (especially little boys), have you ever had one who was able to resist these toy train tables? Me neither.
The highlight for the boys was a train simulator, where you could take the controls of an engine and “drive” it on the screen in front of you.
Dave got his train up to 90 mph, which as you can see is way, way too fast.
This was the room we were in. It also included mocked-up storefronts, a dress-up area, and a telegraph to send messages across the room (Sarah is using it in this photo).
Another room showed a detailed re-creation of a typical locomotive assembly—in other words, what a train factory would look like in the 1800’s. After that, the museum transitioned to the story of the General.
You might know it as
The Great Locomotive Chase, which was the title of an obscure 1956 Disney movie starring Fess Parker (better known to Disney fans as Davy Crockett). The story also was the basis of the 1926 Buster Keaton silent film “
The General”. I have not seen either of these movies, but wouldn’t mind watching either of them if I got the chance.
The museum itself had a movie which told the story in odd fashion—they’d hired their own (terrible) actors to describe the chase while editing in train footage from the Disney film. So we kept watching lousy actors mixed in with exciting chase footage from another, better movie.
Anyway, the story itself is a great one, and probably deserves a modern Hollywood remake. At its heart, it’s a spy mission. As I briefly mentioned in the last chapter, Chattanooga was a hub of railroad activity during the Civil War. The rail line that ran between Chattanooga and Atlanta was the primary supply line for the Confederate Army during the war. It was also a primary line of communications for the Southern army—telegraph lines followed the rail line as it cut through the Appalachian Mountains.
In 1862, with the South enjoying victory after victory in the war and marching further and further north towards Washington, a civilian named James J. Andrews approached Union forces with an idea for a daring mission. Posing as civilians, he would lead a group of Union soldiers behind enemy lines into Georgia, steal a locomotive, and ride it back to Chattanooga, sabotaging the railroad and telegraph lines along the way. If they could inflict enough damage, they could essentially cut off the supply lines for the Confederate Army. It wasn’t out of the question that it could have been a decisive blow in the Civil War.
I’m pulling details from memory here, but if you’re interested in the full and complete story, I recommend Russell S. Bonds’ book
Stealing the General, which is the most comprehensive account available.
The mission was greenlit, and Andrews departed from Tennessee on foot with 21 other men. They had some trouble obtaining civilian clothes for everyone—one of the soldiers purchased some loud pants from a general store. As Bonds writes, “it may be the first and only time in history that a spy attempted to become less conspicuous by wearing bright yellow pants.”
The men split up on their way to Marietta, Georgia, just north of Atlanta. If caught or questioned, they were to say they were on their way to enlist with the Confederate Army. Two of the men ended up having to do just that, only to desert later. Another two made it to Marietta only to oversleep and miss the raid altogether.
Andrews and the remaining raiders boarded a train in Marietta (the General was the engine pulling the train). They looked almost comical, dressed in top hats, coats and finery. The train pulled into the station at Big Shanty (now the town of Kennesaw, where the museum is located) and everyone disembarked to gather in the station for breakfast.
Everyone, that is, except the Andrews Raiders. They walked along the side of the train, following the age-old axiom that we all still used in high school when we were skipping out on a boring class—no one will stop you if you look like you belong and know where you’re going.
Oh, and did I mention the entire train station was surrounded by a garrison of Confederate soldiers?
Early in the morning of April 12, 1862, James J. Andrews and his men walked out in broad daylight, smiling and tipping their caps at soldiers posted on guard, calmly de-coupled the engine from the rest of the train save two cars, stoked the firebox, gave the engine some steam, and pulled out north on the Western & Atlantic Railroad.
In my movie version, this is the part when a stirring orchestral version of the
Battle Hymn of the Republic swells on the soundtrack as we see the train moving through the tents of hundreds of Confederate soldiers.
The Conductor, a proud man named William Fuller, was seated at breakfast at the time. His companions noticed the train making an extremely unscheduled departure and said something to the effect of, “Hey, I think someone’s driving off with your train!” Well, Mr. Fuller was not one to stand for this indignity. So he did what any rational, sane human being would do under these circumstances—he and a couple of companions took off running after the train, on foot.
The General had only made it a few miles away from Big Shanty before they stopped the engine and started dismantling the telegraph wires. This proved to be a smart move, as the communication lines were cut before anyone back at Big Shanty could send a message ahead that the train had been stolen. The Andrews Raiders would proceed for the next couple hours, stopping to cut telegraph wires or pry up some rails from the railroad. It was slow going, because prying up rail lines was hard, tedious work. They could only afford the time to pry up a rail here or there, knowing that someone would be in pursuit eventually. Additionally, it was raining, so it was no use trying to burn bridges.
That someone was the ever-determined Conductor Fuller. After running for a couple of miles, he and his companions upgraded their chase vehicle by commandeering a hand-powered push car from a work crew.
Near the town of Etowah, the Andrews Raiders passed another locomotive, the Yonah, parked on a siding. Andrews considered destroying it to make sure it couldn’t be used in pursuit, but their cover hadn’t been blown yet and he didn’t want to risk alerting the town and nearby troops. Instead, he stuck to his cover story of being a special northbound ammunitions train ordered by Confederate General Beauregard in support of the troops being attacked near Chattanooga. This story worked for most of the isolated stations along the route, but at the junction town of Kingston, he was delayed for over an hour by the station master as he tried to work out the arrival of the General ahead of schedule. There were some actual special freight movements coming south from Chattanooga (telegraph wires from Kingston to Chattanooga were still working), and Andrews was forced to wait until the southbound trains cleared the way.
Meanwhile, guess what Mr. Fuller found? The Yonah, still in good operating condition. He commandeered the Yonah, and rode it north, probably thankful for the break. He then traded that engine for another, the William R. Smith, and continued his pursuit. He eventually had to abandon that locomotive when he encountered a section of sabotaged track, and once again continued on foot. Eventually, he found another engine, the Texas, which had been idling on a siding facing south. No big deal—Fuller simply drove the Texas backwards down the track to the north.
This is the part where
When Johnny Comes Marching Home takes over the movie soundtrack. Along with the Texas, Fuller had recruited 11 Confederate soldiers to aid in the pursuit. They had finally been able to use the telegraph to notify Confederate forces in Chattanooga of the approaching threat. The General was running out of fuel, and losing ground fast to Fuller and the Texas. The Texas pulled within sight of the General near the areas of Dalton and Tunnel Hill. Finally, near Ringgold, Georgia, just a few miles from Chattanooga, Andrews gave the order to abandon the General. Every man for himself!
Within 2 weeks, all of the Andrews Raiders (including the two who had overslept) had been captured by the Confederacy. Eight of the men (including Andrews) were tried and hanged as spies. Another eight managed to escape the prison and made it safely back to Union lines. The other six were eventually exchanged back to the North as prisoners of war. Most of the soldiers involved in the raid were awarded the very first Congressional Medals of Honor, the highest military honor in the U.S. Andrews, being a civilian, was ineligible for the award.
Would that make a great movie, or what?
Sadly, I must now return from that better, much more vastly entertaining story back to the boring story of my vacation. Here we are in front of the General herself:
Overall, the museum took maybe two hours to visit. I think it was well worth the time.
It’s only 25 miles from the museum to downtown Atlanta, but every horror story you’ve ever heard about Atlanta traffic is true. It took us about an hour to get there. We parked in the Aquarium garage and then walked across the street to get some lunch at the
Atlanta Breakfast Club.
No one exactly knows who first came up with the idea of serving chicken & waffles together, but Atlanta has laid claim to specializing in the dish (with a strong challenge from
Roscoe’s in Los Angeles). In any case, we were in town and wanted the local flavor.
Now, I’ve had many discussions on the boards concerning various readers’ opinions of foods and our likes/dislikes, and it must be said that there are all sorts of tastes and palates represented here. Some swing towards fine gourmet dining. Some, like me, swing towards your standard blue-collar meat-and-potatoes-and-high-cholesterol diet. And some seem to have no problem bouncing in between, depending on what mood strikes.
In the course of those discussions, I’ve learned that there are some with particularly refined tastes (for simplification, let’s just call them “weirdos”) who like to ruin meat by adding mayonnaise to it. They also have stated definitively that they do not like chicken and waffles. These people are, of course, wrong. Nevertheless, I must allow that while I praise the following meal, it may not appeal to all of you.
We ordered a few entrees to split at the table—a couple of orders of chicken & waffles, and another dish called “peach cobbler french toast”, which just sounded heavenly. In the meantime, somebody had the bright idea to give the camera to the kids.
Thankfully, the server eventually rescued us by bringing our food.
Peach cobbler French toast is basically a combination of peach pie and French toast. It’s just as heavenly as it sounds.
And then there were the chicken & waffles. Love it! The idea of savory and sweet might weird you out at first, but hey, we all eat chocolate-covered pretzels, right? Somehow, it just works. Crispy, salty fried chicken, sweet waffles with some maple syrup…just wonderful.
And that made for our third Drooling Homer Award for Excellence in Unpretentious Dining in a row.
Coming Up Next: Finally, the aquarium. Followed by another wholesome, nutritious meal.
I believe I was right in @docsoliday1 's back yard as well.
