To North Carolina's Nantahala Gorge With the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad
Misty clouds, rising from the dark eco-friendly faces of the Great Smoky Mountains during the early morning, appeared like smoke tendrils. The twelve-car train, putting on the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad's tuscan red and Rio Grande gold livery and also drawn by an EMD GP-9 diesel engine, shook and clanged its bell atop the gravel-imbedded rails alongside the grey, wood Bryson City depot, as it prepared for its unavoidable, 44-mile, round-trip departure to Nantahala Gorge. Passengers, many of whom had actually dislodged from buses, flooded the small veranda waiting area, waned right into a North Carolina state of mind by a guitar-strumming trio. I would certainly make the journey in the MacNeill Club Car, number 536, today, connected to generator cars and truck 6118 and also tracked by Silver Meteor dining car 8015. That journey, inextricably tired to these western North Carolina hills, might map its beginnings to the mid-1800s. Although the ruggedly attractive area had actua...