June 15 is Train Day in Toccoa, Georgia

You can’t catch an Amtrak passenger anywhere in Oconee County, but one nearby depot where you can catch one is Toccoa, Georgia. Once again, Toccoa will stage Toccoa Train Day, with this year’s event to be Saturday, June 15. The day will start at 6:15 in the morning, with the arrival of the Amtrak Crescent Line, which draws a small, but faithful crowd. WNEG Radio will broadcast, as the train arrives. The Crescent Line that stops in Toccoa and passes thru Seneca and Westminster travels more states than any other Amtrak route and offers daily service from New York’s Penn Station to the New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal. Toccoa began celebrating Train Day nine years ago, as part of National Train Day. Amtrak started the observance as a way to spread word about the advantages of rail travel and to educate people about the history of trains in the U-S. The region has its own share of passenger train history. Some folks can remember that a northbound train carried the body of President Franklin Roosevelt, who died in Warm Springs, Georgia during the last days of the Second World War. Other trains carried candidates for Presidential tickets—such as in 1960 when Lyndon Johnson made his way thru as the vice presidential candidate on the ticket of John Kennedy for President. And 1992 was the year that a sitting president, George H-W Bush, stopped at Clarksville, Georgia and made a speech in the campaign won that year by Bill Clinton.