The Sun Sets on the Railroad to McLemore Cove

These railroad tracks in McLemore Cove appeared in a scene in Water for Elephants.

One of the many things I loved about living in McLemore Cove was the occasional sight of an old locomotive chugging its way down from Chattanooga into the Cove, towing a few cars to or from a factory near the Kensington community.

The tracks were once part of the TAG (Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia) Railroad that ran 91 miles from Chattanooga through northwest Georgia to Gadsden, Alabama. The TAG was absorbed into the Southern Railway System in 1971 and most of the route was abandoned, but the northernmost 23 miles, from Chattanooga to Kensington, continued to be operated by the Chattanooga and Chickamauga Railway until the factory closed in 2009. Subsequently, some of the tracks were torn up.

When we began living in the Cove, we found that the area was known to many of the older people in Chattanooga as Kensington because, for many years the railroad ran excursions to a hotel in the Kensington community called The Kensington House. The hotel is now a private home, and about all that's left of Kensington is a fire station.

Going north from the fire station about a hundred yards, the tracks cross Kensington Lane. This section of tracks is on your immediate left at that point. This is the way they looked in a scene in the movie Water for Elephants, parts of which were filmed in the Cove.

Sorry to be a day late posting this. Life got in the way.

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.