Tennessee Valley
Railroad Museum

hartered in 1961 and established at its present site by 1970, the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum (TVRM) was organized by Chattanooga area railfans as a means of preserving steam locomotive operation and historic railway equipment. Located east of Chattanooga, Tennessee, the museum inhabits former Southern Railway property and right-of-way, featuring s a 3-mile mainline that penetrates Chattanooga's famous Missionary Ridge through a nearly thousand-foot tunnel. This was a segment of the original Southern Railway mainline between Chattanooga and Bristol, before mainline capacity upgrades mid-century bypassed the tunnel with a new double-track route. TVRM trains — the "Missionary Ridge Local" — run the museum segment multiple times each day of the operating season, and riders are given tours of an operating roundtable and Soule Shops — the museum's heavy maintenance and renovation facility. Frequent offline excursions take place throughout the year via a Norfolk Southern interchange to downtown Chattanooga, over the Hiawassee Gorge route, or over the shortline Chattooga & Chickamauga Railway.

Over the decades, TVRM has been home to a number of well known excursion steam locomotives, including Southern Railway #4501, #630, and #722, a great variety of equipment that tell the story of railroading in the region. In the fall of 2021, Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum celebrates its 60th anniversary as the premier operating railroad museum of the southeast. As one tourist guide notes, "If you were to take a steam railroad from the 1920s, shrink it, and preserve it, you'd have the Tennessee Valley Railroad."