Chattanooga Choo Choo
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"Chattanooga Choo Choo" was a big-band Glenn Miller swing song featured in the 1941 movie Sun Valley Serenade, which starred amongst others Milton Berle and Joan Davis. Released on the RCA Victor label, the record became the first to be certified a gold disc on February 10, 1942, for sales of 1,200,000.
The song tells the story of travelling from New York City to Chattanooga. However, the inspiration for the song was a small, wood-burning steam locomotive of the 2-6-0 type which belonged to the Cincinnati Southern Railroad, which is now part of the Norfolk Southern Railway system. That train is now a museum artifact (see below). From 1880, most trains bound for America's South passed through the southeastern Tennessee city of Chattanooga, often on to the super-hub of Atlanta. The Chattanooga Choo Choo did not refer to any particular train, though some have incorrectly asserted that it referred to Louisville and Nashville's Dixie Flyer or the Southern Railway's Crescent Limited. However, neither of these trains ever stopped in Chattanooga, and it should be further noted that it has never been possible to travel from New York to Chattanooga without changing trains at least twice.
Legacy
Today, one of the original trains has pride of place in Chattanooga's former Terminal Station. Once owned and operated by the Southern Railway, the station was saved from demolition after the withdrawal of passenger railway service in the early 1970s, and it is now part of a 30 acre (12 hectare) resort complex, including the Choo-Choo Holiday Inn and numerous historical railway exhibits. For a premium, guests can stay in half of a restored passenger railway car (availability varies). The city's other historic station, Union Station, was demolished in 1973 and the site is now a large office building, even though parts of the station pre-dated the American Civil War. In addition to the railroad exhibits at "the Choo Choo", there are further exhibits at Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum, which is in the suburb of East Chattanooga.
The reputation given to the city by the song also lent itself to making Chattanooga the home of the National Model Railroad Association. In addition, the athletics mascot at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga is an anthropomorphized mockingbird named Scrappy, who is dressed as a railroad engineman and is sometimes depicted at the throttle of a locomotive.
Trivia
The song's lyrics are parodied in the dialogue of the 1974 Young Frankenstein movie. The title character, played by Gene Wilder arrives by train to a station, asks a passing lad Pardon me boy, is this the Transylvania Station? and gets Yah, yah, track twenty-nine and Oh, can I give you a shine? responses. The youngster is indeed carrying a shoeshine box. In the song, the singer actually asks about the Chattanooga Choo Choo but the Pensylvania Station appears in the following strophe.
External link
- Choo Choo official website (http://www.choochoo.com/)