East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad 12, Historic narrow gauge steam locomotive in Blowing Rock, North Carolina.
East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad 12 is a narrow-gauge steam locomotive of the Ten-Wheeler type, built by Baldwin Locomotive Works and now on display in North Carolina. It runs on a track gauge of 914 millimeters and is equipped with two cylinders, making it a tender locomotive designed to haul both passengers and freight across mountain terrain.
Built in 1917 by Baldwin Locomotive Works, the engine served the East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad as its last narrow-gauge locomotive until operations on that line ended around 1950. It was then preserved and moved to Tweetsie Railroad in 1957, where it has been running ever since.
At Tweetsie Railroad in Blowing Rock, the engine still runs on its original narrow-gauge track, giving riders a direct sense of how mountain rail travel once felt. Visitors can watch the crew at work and hear the whistle echo through the surrounding hills.
The locomotive is part of Tweetsie Railroad in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, where visitors can ride behind it on a loop through mountain terrain during the park's operating season. Arriving early in the day generally means shorter waits and more time to see the rest of the park.
Although it now runs inside a theme park, this engine is the only surviving locomotive from the ET&WNC Railroad, a distinction that earned it a place on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. That recognition applies to the locomotive itself as an object, which is quite rare for a piece of rolling stock still in regular use.
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