The station at Chattanooga in the southern United States was made famous by the song - Chattanooga Choo-Choo- composed by bandleader, Glenn Miller in the 1940s. The song saved the station from demolition when trains stopped running there three and a half years ago. Now it has been turned into a large tourist and entertainment centre designed to attract railway enthusiasts.

The scheme was thought up by a group of local businessmen to save a local landmark and make some money. The main station building has been turned into a restaurant capable of holding thirteen hundred people. Customers buy tickets which do not take them on a journey but stand for items on the menu. For instance, New Orleans stands for shrimps, New York for steak. Some of the railway tracks have been converted into formal gardens, others hold old trains and carriages. One of them is the special carriage of Franklin Roosevelt who was President of the United States from 1932 to 1945. A new hotel has been built nearby but the best rooms are in old sleeping cars which have been refurnished in elegant, turn of the century style. There are also shops full of books on trains and models for railway enthusiasts. Finally there is what is claimed to be the largest model railway complex in the country. When it is completed there will be seventy five trains operated by a computer.