Southern Railway Coach No 1200

Pete Claussen, a friend of the Museum, located this segregated railway coach at the Tennessee Valley Railway Museum in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The Museum worked with Wasatch Railroad Contractors to have the coach restored over a period of 18 months. The coach was transported by trailer to Washington, D.C., for installation inside the Museum in November 2013 after restoration was complete, nearly three years before the museum would open, because the train would be too large to install once the walls were in place. Two 500-ton cranes carefully swung the coach over the building shell and 60 feet into the lower level of the building. The coach weighs 77 tons, which made the lifting and installation of the coach complicated and exciting.