Where is tweetsie railroad

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Bass Lake. Boone Greenway. Cascade Falls. Crabtree Falls. Elk Knob State Park. Glen Burney Trail. Linville Falls. Mount Mitchell. Price Lake Trail. Rough Ridge. Ice Skating. Snow Tubing. Appalachian Ski Mountain. Beech Mountain Resort. Sugar Mountain Resort. Several small logging lines were built as feeder lines to it as business boomed, especially with the purchase of the Carnegie iron furnace in Johnson City.

In the line was extended to Boone, and passenger service provided access to the formerly isolated area as the railroad also brought lumber out of the mountains. Another extension expanded the line 12 more miles to Hampton, Tenn.

Narrow gauge means the track is only three feet wide, which is significantly narrower than most train tracks. Destructive floods in August and competition with modern roads brought about unprofitable conditions for the railroad. Tweetsie Locomotive 12, the only remaining locomotive of the railroad's original 13, was bought by a group of railroad enthusiasts and moved to Virginia. Soon after, Hurricane Hazel destroyed the railroad tracks, forcing the group to sell the locomotive.

It found a new owner in movie cowboy Gene Autry, who intended to use it in his films. This ownership was short-lived. Autry, unable to transport the locomotive to California, sold it for one dollar to Gene Robbins Jr.

Robbins intended to ship the locomotive back to Blowing Rock. Later that summer, Tweetsie Locomotive 12 and the cars made a widely welcomed maiden run on new tracks just miles from the old station in Boone. In awe of the many hairpin turns that the railroad navigated, people briefly used the nickname "Stemwinder" for the train.

But "Tweetsie"-in recognition of the shrill "tweet-tweet" of the locomotive's whistle-soon became the official name. Riding the three-mile loop on the Tweetsie Railroad is an amusing adventure that includes helping a U.

Other attractions at the Tweetsie Railroad theme park include live entertainment such as the Palace Saloon Show, Bluegrass Bands, the Rainmaker, and the Tweetsie Clogging Jamboree, and a chair lift to Miner's Mountain that offers a panoramic view of the surrounding area.

Raleigh, N. Dunn, Michael J. July Associated Press. January 6, Image courtesy of Flickr user Carl Grant. I came there when I was a child. Then I brought my children there in the early 's. I would like to know if this place is still going to be open this summer.