The Story of "The General"

The name of the locomotive on the front of this post card is "The General". It was made famous by the 1926 Buster Keaton film, The General. In early

spring 1862 Northern forces advanced on Huntsville, Alabama, heading for Chattanooga, Tennessee. Union general Ormsby Mitchel accepted the offer of a civilian spy, James J. Andrews, a contraband merchant and trader between the lines, to lead a raiding party behind Confederate lines to Atlanta, steal a locomotive, and race northward, destroying track, telegraph lines, and maybe bridges toward Chattanooga. The raid thus aimed to knock out the Western and Atlantic Railroad, which supplied Confederate forces at Chattanooga, just as Mitchel’s army advanced. On April 7 Andrews chose twenty-two volunteers from three Ohio infantry regiments, plus one civilian. In plain clothes they slipped through the lines to Chattanooga and entrained to Marietta; two men were caught on the way. Two more overslept on the morning of April 12, when Andrews’s party boarded the northbound train. They traveled eight miles to Big Shanty (present-day Kennesaw), chosen for the train jacking because it had no telegraph. While crew and passengers ate breakfast, the raiders uncoupled most of the cars. At about 6 a.m. they steamed out of Big Shanty aboard the locomotive General, a tender, and three empty boxcars. Though it created a sensation at the time, the Andrews Raid had no military effect. General Mitchel’s forces captured Huntsville on April 11 but did not move on to Chattanooga. The cut telegraph lines and pried rails were quickly repaired. Nevertheless, the train thieves were hailed in the North as heroes. This information was taken from this website: Davis, Stephen. "Andrews Raid." New Georgia Encyclopedia, last modified Oct 5, 2018. https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/andrews-raid/ The post card was published by W. M. Kline Company out of Chattanooga, Tennessee, a publisher of Southern view-cards as Linens and Photochomes. Most cards depicted scenes of Tennessee and North Carolina with quite a few on Cherokee Indians. They also issued a large series of real photo postcards with white borders. They existed from 1942 to 1960.

Is that the Engineer?

No. That isn't the engineer standing on the front of the locomotive. That is Buster Keaton staring in the film "The Great Locomotive Chase" This must be a promotional shot that was then made into a post card by the National Railroad Historical Society. On January 12, 2022, I wrote a post about the locomotive pictured on the front of this post card – with out Buster Keaton standing on the pilot/cow catcher. The General was used to in Andrew’s Raild during the American Civil War. The next week, January 19, 2022, I wrote the blog about the locomotive that was used to chase (and eventually catch) the raiding party of Union Soldiers. The picture on the front of this post card is promoting the Walt Disney movie “The Great Locomotive Chase”, which was filmed at Clayton, Georgia on the Talullah Falls Railroad. Today I will write about the publisher of this post card: The National Railroad Historical Society chapter in Georgia. The Atlanta Chapter, NRHS, owns the Southeastern Railway Museum Located at 3595 Buford Highway in Duluth Depot. This 35 acre, mostly volunteer operated Museum, houses about 90 items of rolling stock, the restored circa 1871 Duluth Depot, a park train and many small artifacts.

A demonstration train ride featuring vintage diesels and cabooses is offered. Programs at monthly meetings include speakers, A/V presentations and occasional field trips. The Atlanta Chapter is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization which celebrated its 50th anniversary in March 2009. And a bit about the parent organization. The information is taken from this part of their website: https://nrhs.com/about-us/ The NRHS was founded in 1935 by a group of rail historians. It has since grown from 40 founding members to include over 13,000 men and women of all ages and professions in every state and many foreign countries, making it the nation’s largest rail preservation and historical society. The original society was formed as a consolidation of two of the earliest railfan clubs in the US, the Lancaster (PA) Railway & Locomotive Historical Society and the Interstate Trolley Club of Trenton NJ. The official goal of the new society: “to preserve steam and electric railway historical material; to encourage the building of model railways; to secure data on the history of transportation; and to encourage rail transportation.”

And They're Off...

The locomotive on the front of this post card was part of the “Great Locomotive Chase” during the American Civil War.

Some details about the chase are included in the information below. There is another locomotive that was involved in that chase that has also been preserved and restored. There will be more about this one next week. The locomotive in today’s post is called “The General”. I found this information about the engine on line all at this website: https://locomotive.fandom.com/wiki/The_General The Western & Atlantic Railroad No. 3, named The General, is a type of 4-4-0 "American Standard" steam locomotive that was built in 1855 by The Rogers, Ketchum & Grosvenor Company of Paterson, New Jersey for the Western and Atlantic Railroad, and was involved in the "Great Locomotive Chase" of the American Civil War. (To whom it was owned by the Confederacy of the United States during the Civil War) During the Civil War, the "General" was designed to haul freight and passenger trains between Atlanta, GA, and Chattanooga, TN. It often transported Confederate soldiers as well as numerous officers, including the famous Robert E. Lee. The "Great Locomotive Chase" was an event which occurred April 12, 1862, in northern Georgia when the General was hijacked by a group of Union spies led by James J. Andrews while the train was stopped for breakfast at Big Shanty (now Kennesaw, Georgia). Their goal was burn bridges, destroy telegraph lines, and railroad tracks between Atlanta, GA, and Chattanooga, TN. The train's conductor, William A. Fuller, pursued the train, first on foot, then on a push-cart, and later on other locomotives encountered, one of which being the Texas. After an eight hour pursuit, just two miles north of Ringgold, GA the General had run out of fuel and the spies abandoned it. After the war, the "General" continued on the Western & Atlantic. When the railroad began numbering engines, as it was the 39th acquired, the "General" was numbered #39. In 1880, it was renumbered #3. Then in 1891, The General retired from service and it was stored on a siding in Vinings, GA, until it was restored for display at the 1899 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, IL. In 1890, the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway overhauled the General and provided the locomotive for public events and to promote the line's Civil War history (to drum up the tourism trade) up through the 1930's. From 1901-1959 the locomotive used to be on static display at Chattanooga Union Depot in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The locomotive is now preserved on static display at the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History in Kennesaw, Georgia, and it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The post card was published by the Hivnor Card Company out of Zanesvill, Ohio. I could not find anything about them on line. It is a relatively modern post card, of the Photochrome or Plastichrome variety. The "K" inside the diamond is interesting, but I cannot find anything on line about this symbol either.