By Tom Mattingly
When you think about it, trains have been involved in several memorable moments in the history of Tennessee football, way before the 1972 game at Georgia when Vol fans rode a chartered train from Atlanta to Athens. Three of us—Doug Jones, Jim Gentry, and I—were lucky enough to make that trip and remember it to this day.
In 1925, the start of the Tennessee-Georgia game, a 12-7 Vol win, was delayed nearly an hour because the train carrying the officials was delayed en route. The game actually started with volunteer officials being recruited from the stands. Imagine that happening these days.
The officials finally arrived later on, being let off the train near the South end of the stadium. The game concluded as darkness settled over the field.
In 1957, Tennessee traveled by train to Memphis to play Ole Miss at Crump Stadium. The route of choice was through Chattanooga, through northern Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, back into Tennessee, then onward and upward to Memphis.
“Coach Wyatt had a phobia about flying,” said Bill Johnson, a co-captain and All-American selection that season. “The train went to Chattanooga, and then started west. At about 2 or 3 a.m., we were somewhere in West Tennessee when there was an accident. It stopped the train for 7 or 8 hours. We did not get to Memphis until noon for a 1 p.m. kickoff.”
The Vols lost 14-7.
Then there was the hush-hush way Bob Woodruff brought Doug Dickey to Knoxville on Dec. 2, 1963. Woodruff wanted to keep a proper veil of secrecy over his arrival, telling Dickey to fly from Fayetteville, Ark., to Memphis the night before. He then had Dickey board a train to Knoxville that would arrive in town by 6 a.m. Monday, early enough, Bob thought, to keep him away from all those pesky sportswriters.
When asked later why he didn’t fly all the way to Knoxville from Fayetteville, Dickey had a ready answer: “Coach Woodruff wanted me there in the morning.”
Never a respecter of secrecy, the News-Sentinel’s Marvin West was at the train station when Dickey arrived and garnered the first picture of the young coach arriving in Knoxville. The picture made it into that afternoon’s News-Sentinel.
In 1965, in one of the saddest chapters in Tennessee gridiron history, three assistant coaches died in an early morning car-train accident, Cessna at Westland Drive in West Knoxville, on Monday, Oct. 18, two days after the Alabama game, a 7-7 tie Vol fans perceived as a victory.
John Majors’ brother, Bill, and Bob Jones were killed instantly, while Charley Rash died the next Thursday.
In 1977, the Tennessee team buses came perilously close to being sideswiped by a train as the team journeyed from Silver Springs to Gainesville for the Florida game. The team buses were on State Route 315 when they came to an unguarded Seaboard Coast Line crossing.
John Majors, seated on the first bus, remembered it well.
“I was reading at the time and glanced up and saw this train coming lickety-split,” John Majors told Knoxville Journal sportswriter and Vol Network staffer Russ Bebb. “It was right on us. We probably didn’t miss getting hit by more than two seconds. I remember thinking the No. 2 bus had been destroyed. There was no doubt in my mind.”
Bebb reported that buses No. 2 and 3 were able to skid to a stop just a few feet away from the crossing.
He also reported that Majors chewed out the trooper leading the procession when the team arrived at the stadium. “I was absolutely astounded that he would do such a thing, and I let him know it when we got to the stadium,” said John.
When Tennessee played Georgia at a much-smaller Sanford Stadium in Athens on Nov. 4, 1972, many of the Vol partisans in attendance rode to the game on a special Southern Railways train from Atlanta, getting off the train near the stadium’s east end zone.
That was really something special. That was the way to go to a game.
Tennessee won, 14-0, and the trip back to Atlanta through the gloaming of the early evening was fun for all concerned. What would it be like, many on the train wondered, to ride a train to other road games?
For Vol fans of that day, it brought back memories of the days Tennessee traveled by train to nearly every venue.
If you don’t remember the days passenger trains came into and out of Knoxville on a regular basis, either from the L&N Station in the Lower Second Creek Valley or the Southern Railway Station near Gay Street, you’re not alone.
The last passenger trains rolled through Knoxville in the late 1960s, so many of the more youthful fans may be wondering what the fuss was about. In those days, there was a certain mystique, something special about a train trip anywhere, but especially to a football game.
All the elements of history cast aside, would Vol fans ride a train to a game today?
No one really knows, but one thing is a certainty, even after more than 50 years.
The trip home, regardless of the mode of transportation, would be a lot more fun after a win.
