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What young boy doesn’t love trains? Toy trains, model trains, big trains – all are fascinating to boys of all ages, including adult boys. It’s a good thing the real ones are too expensive to buy and operate. Otherwise, we’d own them!

I grew up in central Indiana, New York Central territory, which gave way to Penn Central, then to Conrail, and eventually CSX/Norfolk Southern. Anderson, Indiana, became an industrial city, initially due to the Natural Gas Boom during the few years either side of 1900. There were General Motors component plants there, as well as early automobile manufacturers, and glass, tile, and machine manufacturing, quartz refining, and several other similar businesses. As a result, there were railroad tracks all over town. It was like living in a life-size model train set. A driver could literally get stopped by the same train at crossings in several parts of town. For better or worse, that was the beginning of an interest in trains.

Tullahoma’s very existence is closely related to the railroad’s growth. Though there’s not as much railroad presence in town as there once was, there are still clues to what used to be. A few of those have come to my attention recently, which of course sent me down a rabbit hole looking for more information.

Several weeks ago, when we first started looking at the Sanborn Fire Maps, we pointed out on a 1913 map the railroad sidings at the old Hardwood Manufacturing plant, roughly at the corner of Washington and Volney Streets. I’ve also noticed abandoned sidings along Atlantic Street near the Veteran’s Viaduct. A look at some older images on Google Earth shows that those are probably related sometime over the years. The 1913 map showed the sidings coming off the McMinnville Branch of the railroad, but the aerial view hints that they may have later been attached to the main line.

Jimmy Walker recently showed me a 1938 plat map of Oakwood Cemetery, which sits at the intersection of N. Jackson Street and Wilson Avenue. At the western edge of the map is a railroad spur line, labeled as going to M.R. Campbell Manufacturing, which was located on W. Lincoln Street, directly across the street from Lannom Manufacturing, just east of Rock Creek.

Lastly, several weeks ago, we pointed out behind Northgate Mall the remnant hump of a siding that once went to William Northern Field during the Camp Forrest days, and that once it entered the base, the siding split. Williamson Aviation, owners of the World War II hangar at the airport, provided us with a U.S. Army photograph of that split siding between warehouses.

Do you have sharp pictures of buildings, businesses, churches or events from Tullahoma’s past? If so, reach out to me at alanmayes@lighttube.net.