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Southern Appalachia Railway Museum

Route of the Secret City Scenic Railway

sarm_state egyptian t one time headquartered in Knoxville in the Middlebrook Industrial Park, the Southern Appalachia Railway Museum now maintains a collection of locomotives and rolling stock relevanat to the history of the region in nearby Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The museum retains 7 miles of trackage, a former Southern Railway branchline extending from the K-25 nuclear facility in Oak Ridge to an interchange with Norfolk Southern at Blair, Tennessee. Until 2016, the museum ran excursion trains along this route — dubbed the "Secret City Scenic" line — utilizing a variety of owned and leased diesel-electric power and former Southern Railway passenger equipment. The museum's excursion trains were often the only public access to the K-25 facility, a former uranium enrichment facility from the once-secret but now famous Manhattan Project. Although the return of excursion service remains uncertain, the collection of rolling stock and equipment remains onsite at the Oak Ridge facility.

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regional rail map / RWH

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1998 tourist train guide ad / collection

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2006 tourist train guide ad / collection

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Oak Ridge, Tn / RWH

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Click to see the Oak Ridge rail yard area location plotted on a Google Maps page

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k25_inset K-25 was the codename given by the Manhattan Project to the program to produce enriched uranium for atomic bombs using the gaseous diffusion method. Originally the codename for the product, over time it came to refer to the project, the production facility located at the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the main gaseous diffusion building, and ultimately the site. When it was built in 1944, the four-story K-25 gaseous diffusion plant was the world's largest building, comprising over 5,264,000 square feet (489,000 m2) of floor space and a volume of 97,500,000 cubic feet (2,760,000 m3).

Construction of the K-25 facility was undertaken by J. A. Jones Construction. At the height of construction, over 25,000 workers were employed on the site. Gaseous diffusion was but one of three enrichment technologies used by the Manhattan Project. Slightly enriched product from the S-50 thermal diffusion plant was fed into the K-25 gaseous diffusion plant. Its product in turn was fed into the Y-12 electromagnetic plant. The enriched uranium was used in the Little Boy atomic bomb used in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. In 1946, the K-25 gaseous diffusion plant became capable of producing highly enriched product.

After the war, four more gaseous diffusion plants named K-27, K-29, K-31 and K-33 were added to the site. The K-25 site was renamed the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant in 1955. Production of enriched uranium ended in 1964, and gaseous diffusion finally ceased on the site on 27 August 1985. The Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant was renamed the Oak Ridge K-25 Site in 1989, and the East Tennessee Technology Park in 1996. Demolition of all five gaseous diffusion plants was completed in February 2017.

Wikipedia

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Click to see the ticket hut area plotted on a Google Maps page

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Scrapbooks

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ties_clipping2003a I've enjoyed several visits to the Oak Ridge yard of the Southern Appalachia Railway Museum, but unfortunately I started visting too late to catch the Secret City excursions. Dad, however, did enjoy the scenic little line during the 2003 visit of the Southern Railway Historical Association — a group to which he belonged for years. He served as SRHA president for a short time and as modeling editor for many issues of their excellent TIES magazine. Featured below are clippings from the issue that covered the Oak Ridge convention.

The former DuPont RS1s make an excellent anchor to a terrific collection of first and second generation motive power. I'm so pleased that dad was able to ride behind the #10 of the pair. I'm sure the photo runbys were a real treat. As for me, every time I swing through Oak Ridge there is something new to see in the way of motive power and rolling stock. Like the energy from atoms the nation once split at the Facility, so also the SARM collection is never at rest.

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from Southern Railway Historical Association TIES magazine - Jul 2003 / collection

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Links / Sources

This page was updated on 2023-04-05