Tallulah Falls Railway Museum

The museum commemorates the Tallulah Falls Railway, the storied Georgia short line that climbed from Cornelia along the rim of Tallulah Gorge toward Franklin, North Carolina. Rails reached the resort town of Tallulah Falls in 1882 under the Richmond and Danville Railroad, serving a tourist trade so lively that seventeen hotels and boarding houses once catered to gorge visitors. The Tallulah Falls Railway Company was organized in March 1898 to buy the line out of foreclosure and extend it, finally reaching Franklin in June 1907 at 57.2 miles. The push exhausted the road, and from 1923 it ran under receivership as tourism waned; steam gave way to diesel in 1948, and in 1955 Walt Disney picked the line, with its rural scenery and 42 towering wooden trestles, as the filming location for The Great Locomotive Chase. The final run came on March 25, 1961, and the railway was ordered sold as scrap. Today the volunteer-run museum preserves the memory of the line locals knew as 'The TF' through its static exhibits.