Travel report : North Carolina - 08-22-2009
| Today, we took a trip to the Smoky Mountains. After a hearty breakfast buffet at Shoney´s we took off. US-64 is very beautiful from a scenic point of view (if you have the time to admire it). In order to save some time, we took the interstate (after all, we had 145 miles to cover). However, driving on the interstate is like driving on the German Autobahn : dead boring. After an hour or so we had to turn off the interstate and found ourselves on state roads again. I had a blast driving over these cury and partly quite steep roads! The Smoky Mountains can be compared to the German Alps, only here it is definitely warmer and the vegeation is thicker. After a few "fun brakes" left the road, I was able to chase the Charger and have a bit fun driving again. Bryson City is located in the Cherokee River Valley and mainly lives from tourism. Nonetheless, a nice little town, especially as the Smoky Mountains Railway is located here. This is purely a tourist line with GP7s and GP9s as motive power. They also own a Consolidation but this engine is out of order and will not be back in service before two years. Bummer! Since we were already there, we bought a ticket for the last ride of this day known as the "Lone Ranger Tour". During that trip, two bandits staged a hold-up but the Lone Ranger naturally saved the world... Another surprise were the moderate motel rates for a tourism - town and so we booked a room for two nights. Tomorrow we will chase the train going through Nantahala Gorge. Hopefully, we will find some backroads that take us parallel to the tracks. Google maps doesn´t show much here but Google isn´t nessessarily always right (we learned that already). First, however, we had a look at the museum attached to the GSMR - station. Following are a few pictures about it... |
|
 The displays showcase mainly models made by Lionel (O-gauge and 1-gauge), from the very early to contemporary models. |
|
  |
|
  |
|
 | |
| A couple of layouts are also displayed in the museum. Apart from two smaller ones - I´d like to describe them as functional layouts - there is also a very neat O-gauge layout. | |
  |
|
  |
|
| But now: back to fresh air - even though it is a lot warmer out there. Our train for the "Lone Ranger" tour has been readied and is waiting for us. And of course, this tour has to be documented :-). | |
Für die englische Version dieser Seite bitte einfach das Sprach-Icon rechts neben der Titelgrafik anklicken...
Please click the language icon to the right of the sitelogo for the English version of this page...
© 2009 by Erhard Baltrusch, Hamburg, Germany