A "Wonderful World of Disney" episode on the making of this Civil War era railroad film, which includes a bit of revenue footage of the Tallula Falls Railroad, 1950s footage at a then new B&O Museum, and test shots of the V&T's "Inyo" on the TF:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Akc_bq8BIm4

I remember watching that film as a kid. Watched it mainly for the trains, and not for the actual action. However I would like to say that looking back on it now, it really is a good movie, and not just for the locomotives.

The movie in large part was based upon historical testimony of the event. For an event that ended up being so minor, it was very well documented. Rev. William Pittenger published three different versions of "Daring and Suffering" and prior to the publication of the third edition, acquired many related maps of the Western and Atlantic Railroad of the State of Georgia and made a trip over the road accompanied by William Fuller. The information that Fuller gave him made it's way into the final edition.

Additional information was recorded by Atlanta historian Wilbur Kurtz, who was the son in law of Conductor Fuller and collected a great deal of information from interviews with participants. I believe that most of his papers ended up with the Atlanta Historical Society, though some are in private hands.

For those who want the full story, "Daring and Suffering" is a must read book.

I just bought the Kindle version and thus far it is indeed a good read.
If ya go the Kindle route, stay away from the "CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (June 6, 2013)" version, which did not transfer well. What did I expect for 99 cents....

I'd encourage also the recent book STEALING THE GENERAL which, along with history, lays out the story of how Pittenger's version was not necessarily like what many of the other survivors remembered.

Dave -

I concur that the recent book "Stealing the General" by Russell S. Bonds is an excellent account of the event and its aftermath.


Les

We recently received at the Md. Rail Heritage Library the donation of the library of a Baltimore Streetcar Museum member whose eyesight was failing. Among his sub-specialities was the railroads of the Atlanta, Georgia area, and we ended up with several of the "contemporary" books about the "Great Locomotive Chase."

Among the other donations were articles on the "Chase" and the W&A in general in the Atlanta Historical Society journal and other historical society publications.

Suffice it to say that, at least somewhere along the line, it appears that every last survivor of the episode on both sides attempted to a) capitalize on their exploits for years or even decades; b) inflate their role in the episode for posterity/ego's sake, and c) naysay other accounts of the episode. Further, some authors, then as now, don't seem to let the facts get in the way of a gripping story in order to sell books.

Leafing through both the various accounts (often filled with bombastic prose that would be laughable coming out of even a presidential candidate today) and the accounts about the accounts of the incident left me with a quite jaded and cynical approach to all the "I Was There" accounts of not only the "General" incident, but almost any Civil War recollections. I hasten to remember my father's advice that "those that do the most talking about their war exploits saw the least action or combat, and vice versa."

Were there, for lack of a better term, "letters home" from any of these people who actually experienced this? Those would seem to be the most honest and accurate portrayals, I would imagine (in my few years of research at Gettysburg College - where I minored in Civil War Era Studies) - especially if the letters came from shortly after the incidents occurred, before stories had a chance to be trumped up...

Not to my knowledge--but then again, I only skimmed over the material, ascertaining whether the works were works of fiction, stylized stories (like, say, a juvenile/yong adult book intended for a school library), or an "I was there" account, or a rehashing of the whole episode in historical analysis. Remember as well that eight of the perpetrators of the Andrews Raid were captured and executed, and others were in prison until escape or trade for other prisoners of war.

The major account often cited was by William Pittenger, who by many accounts was simply a small player in the raid itself, but got the chance to tell his tale (possibly with some embellishment?) in his book Daring and Suffering, a History of the Great Railroad Adventurers (Philadelphia, 1863; enlarged ed., New York, 1887).

I haven't read Pittenger's book yet, but I have read Bonds' "Stealing the General". Bonds states that Pittenger claimed locomotives jumped sections of missing track later in his life and was very adamant about it. So claims of embellishment from Pittenger are probably fair.

Trains jumping over sections of missing track is not a fancy. Check this video of US Army attempts to derail a train.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-8gV4DJZUw