Legacy and Popular Culture
Today, trains have pride of place in Chattanooga's former Terminal Station. Once owned and operated by the Southern Railway, the station was saved from demolition after the withdrawal of passenger rail service in the early 1970s, and it is now part of a 30-acre (12-hectare) resort complex, including the Chattanooga Choo-Choo Hotel, and numerous historical railway exhibits. Hotel guests can stay in half of a restored passenger railway car. Dining at the complex includes the Gardens restaurant in the Terminal Station itself, The Station House (which is housed in a former baggage storage room) and the "Dinner in the Diner" which is the complex's fine dining venue, housed in a restored 1941 Class A dining car. The city's other historic station, Union Station, parts of which predated the Civil War, was demolished in 1973; its site is now an office building housing the corporate offices of the Krystal restaurant chain. In addition to the railroad exhibits at "the Choo Choo", there are further exhibits at Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum, in the suburb of East Chattanooga.
The reputation given to the city by the song also lent itself to making Chattanooga the home of the National Model Railroad Association. In addition, the athletic mascot of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga is a rather menacing-looking anthropomorphized mockingbird named Scrappy, who is dressed as a railroad engineer and is sometimes depicted at the throttle of a steam locomotive.
In 2001, the song was performed by Kiss members Ace Frehley and Peter Criss in the Family Guy episode Road to Europe after Lois Griffin didn't know the lyrics to Rock and Roll All Nite, causing Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley to walk off stage in the middle of the concert, allowing Frehley and Criss to perform the song.
Read more about this topic: Chattanooga Choo Choo
Famous quotes containing the words legacy, popular and/or culture:
“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“The poet will prevail to be popular in spite of his faults, and in spite of his beauties too. He will hit the nail on the head, and we shall not know the shape of his hammer. He makes us free of his hearth and heart, which is greater than to offer one the freedom of a city.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Education must, then, be not only a transmission of culture but also a provider of alternative views of the world and a strengthener of the will to explore them.”
—Jerome S. Bruner (20th century)