Dolly Parton's Dollywood Express

As I’ve written before, there are few institutions, or people, with a higher approval rating than Dolly Parton. While I love her for her music and the feeling of joy she gives us, I also love that Dollywood Express, the heritage steam train that operates within Dollywood, has a higher rail ridership than 27 states.

Dolly grew up in the back hills of the Great Smoky Mountains, not far from a Civil War–themed tourist park called Rebel Railroad. It featured a steam train, a general store, a blacksmith shop, and a saloon. In 1986, Dolly bought a stake in the park and helped relaunch it as Dollywood, which has since doubled in size and become the area’s largest employer.

I’ve never been to Dollywood, but it’s high on my list. Not just because I love Dolly, but I’d really like to ride the Dollywood Express.

The 2.5-mile heritage rail loop has been part of the park since the beginning and features three coal-fired steam engines:

• The Cinderella

• The Beatrice (currently under restoration)

• Klondike Katie

The trains run all day during park hours and can burn through up to four tons of coal per day and 4000 gallons of water.

The Unlikely Origin Story of the Trains

The Dollywood Express locomotives have an unexpected origin: the White Pass & Yukon Route, one of the most remote railways in North America. Built in 1898 during the Klondike Gold Rush, this narrow-gauge line connected Whitehorse, Yukon, to Skagway, Alaska.

At the height of its postwar success, the railway purchased several steam locomotives to meet demand during World War II. But by the mid-1950s, the company transitioned to diesel, and the steam engines were retired.

Meanwhile, the White Pass & Yukon line now operates as a heritage railway, primarily serving cruise passengers. It’s co-owned by Carnival Cruise Lines and still runs through the rugged terrain of the far north.

Eventually, these engines made their way to Tennessee, where they were given a second life at Dollywood.

The Dollywood Express

The Dollywood Express departs every hour and takes 30 minutes round-trip, rain or shine. That makes it the most frequent passenger train in all of Tennessee, by far. Technically, it’s not transit since it drops you off where you started, but if it were used to move people around the park. For the purposes of this piece, we’ll consider it.

Outside of Amtrak’s once-daily City of New Orleans, Tennessee has only three rail transit systems (two of which are currently suspended). That leaves just the WeGo Star in Nashville, which is among the lowest-ridership commuter rail lines in the country. (I wrote about it here.)

Meanwhile, the Dollywood Express, with seven cars and a capacity of about 550 riders per trip, likely carries more people than the entire state’s rail transit combined.

What does it mean?

As I covered in How Disney Became One of the Largest Transit Agencies in North America, I’ll leave this one question open-ended:

“What does it say about the state of our country’s infrastructure when the most ridden train in a $432.2B economy is DollyWood’s heritage steam train?”

To put that in perspective, Tennessee’s economy is equal to Denmark’s. (Yes, I know Denmark is half the size of the state)

Zooming out: Dollywood moves about 5,000 people per day. That’s 92% of all rail riders in Tennessee, if you exclude Amtrak’s single daily train, the City of New Orleans.

Maybe it’s just a fun stat. Maybe it’s an entirely reasonable take. But to me, it’s absolutely insane.

I love Disney and I love Dolly Parton, but it says something deeply broken about our national priorities when their theme park trains outclass public infrastructure in billion-dollar economies. Be serious.

(Author’s Note: Chattanooga’s Lookout Mountain Incline Railway was omitted as it is currently “suspended indefinitely” from a rockslide)

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