Qualla: Great Locomotive Chase

Great Locomotive Chase: Introduction

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jason Riedy from East Point, GA, USA, CC BY 2.0. The passengers and crew were eating breakfast. That was the plan. On the morning of April 12, 1862, when the regular Atlanta-to-Chattanooga train stopped at the Lacy Hotel in Big Shanty, Georgia, for its scheduled meal break, twenty-two Union soldiers in civilian clothes and their civilian leader, James J. Andrews, walked to the front of the train, uncoupled the locomotive General and three boxcars, and drove off into the Georgia hills. Behind them, train conductor William Allen Fuller dropped his fork, sprinted out of the hotel, and began chasing a stolen locomotive on foot. What followed was one of the most dramatic pursuits in American military history, an eighty-seven-mile running battle by rail that ended in capture, execution, escape, and the first Medals of Honor ever awarded.

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Image: Jason Riedy from East Point, GA, USA | CC BY 2.0

Great Locomotive Chase: The Spy Who Had Tried Before

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brett Weinstein from Scarsdale, New York, CC BY-SA 2.0. James J. Andrews was a Kentucky-born civilian serving as a spy and scout for Union Major General Don Carlos Buell. The locomotive theft was his second attempt. Weeks earlier, in late March, Andrews had led a smaller party south to Marietta, Georgia, planning to steal a train with...

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Image: Brett Weinstein from Scarsdale, New York | CC BY-SA 2.0

Great Locomotive Chase: Eighty-Seven Miles of Iron

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Fredlyfish4, CC BY-SA 4.0. The raiders seized the General at Big Shanty because the station had no telegraph office, or so they believed. Andrews told every station master along the route that he was running a special ammunition train north for General Beauregard. The lie worked on the isolated officials w...

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Image: Fredlyfish4 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Great Locomotive Chase: The Texas Runs Backward

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robert Rynerson from Denver, U.S.A., CC BY 2.0. Two miles south of Adairsville, Fuller hit broken track where the raiders had torn up a rail. He abandoned his locomotive and continued on foot yet again until he encountered the southbound locomotive Texas near Calhoun. Andrews had bluffed the Texas crew into taking a siding, bu...

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Image: Robert Rynerson from Denver, U.S.A. | CC BY 2.0

Great Locomotive Chase: The Rope and the Medal

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Confederate authorities charged the raiders with acts of unlawful belligerency. Andrews, tried in Chattanooga and convicted as a spy, was hanged in Atlanta on June 7, 1862. Seven more raiders were executed on June 18, their bodies buried in an unmarked grave later relocated to Ch...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Great Locomotive Chase: Iron Horses Preserved

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JJonahJackalope, CC BY-SA 4.0. Both locomotives survived the war and the century that followed. The General sits today in the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History in Kennesaw, Georgia, close to where the chase began. The Texas is displayed at the Atlanta History Center. William Pittenger, a corp...

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Image: JJonahJackalope | CC BY-SA 4.0