Blue Ridge Country Nov/Dec 2024 - 14

'Let the Tracks Lead You Here'
Once a center of the renowned northeast Georgia moonshine business,
the railroad town of Cornelia has found new ways to flourish.
TEXT AND PHOTOS BY JOAN VANNORSDALL
Y
ou can't not pay attention to it, the 5,200-pound
apple outside the Cornelia Depot Railroad Museum.
Seven feet high and 22 feet around, the
apple sits on an eight-foot pedestal and shines bright.
Molded in Winchester, Virginia (the Apple Capital
of the World), the apple came by rail in 1925 to Cornelia,
courtesy of the Southern Railway.
Why, I ask Cornelia Main Street Manager Noah
Hamil, is his town known as the Home of the Big
Red Apple, with the annual Big Red Apple Festival its
largest event? " Apples and peaches were our big crops
here in the early 20th century. After World War II, that
changed. "
Still, Cornelia celebrates its trains and apples, and
both dominate the heart-center of downtown. In 1872,
passenger and freight rail service came to town, followed
10 years later by the shortline Tallulah Falls Railway.
Today, the Norfolk Southern trains run long and
often through the center of Cornelia, rattling the windows
of the Depot Museum. Inside you'll see the
announcement of the October 20, 1992 Cornelia
arrival of President George W. Bush on his
Whistle Stop Train Tour. The museum walls are
lined with railroad art, old photographs and early
20th-century railroad memorabilia.
This little museum is home to one of only two
train circuit boards in America-the other
in storage at the Smithsonian. It's massive,
and looks impossibly complex, and
if you're there when a museum guide is
present, you might get to sit and play with
14 BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM
CLOCKWISE
FROM TOP LEFT:
Community Brew
& Tap draws
diners from as far
away at Atlanta.
Street art is
ubiquitous in
Cornelia.
The mysterious
" Tim loves Tink "
graffiti has been
memorialized in a
mural.
Tallulah Gorge,
" The Niagara
of the South. "
Cornelia's Big Red
Apple sits city
center.
the hundreds of switches that used to shift trains from
one track to another.
Walk across the train tracks, up the stairs and over
a few blocks, and you'll find the Everything Elvis Museum,
tucked on the third floor of the 1908 Loudermilk
Boarding House and reportedly listed in Guinness
World Records to be the largest collection of Elvis paraphernalia
in the world.
And down the street, a beautiful but puzzling wall
mural: a railroad underpass, mountains beyond it,
framed by these words: " CORNELIA LOVES TIM
LOVES TINK. "
The obvious questions: Who's Tim? Who's Tink?
And why does Cornelia love them?
The urban legend goes something like this. It was
sometime in the '50s...or was it the '60s? Or maybe the
'70s. Someone spray-painted " Tim Loves Tink " on the
railroad underpass going out of town. It got removed...
and painted again. And again. No one knew who was
behind it...or at least they weren't talking. As soon as the
love declaration was removed, a new one appeared.
Eventually, the town gave in, painting the phrase
on the underpass: permanent graffiti.
And now a massive " Cornelia loves Tim loves
Tink " mural on a downtown building, forever marrying
Tim, Tink and the City of Cornelia in beautiful
colors for all to see.
A massive, gifted red apple. The only intact historic
train circuit board in America. The largest Elvis
collection in the world. A mysterious love
note. All in Cornelia's walkable downtown,
Cornelia,
Georgia
https://cornelia.city/ http://www.BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM
Blue Ridge Country Nov/Dec 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Blue Ridge Country Nov/Dec 2024
