Western & Atlantic Railroad #3 General is a 4-4-0 "American" type steam locomotive built in 1855 by the Rogers, Ketchum & Grosvenor in Paterson, New Jersey for the Western & Atlantic Railroad, best known as the engine stolen by Union spies in the Great Locomotive Chase, an attempt to cripple the Confederate rail network during the American Civil War.

Built in 1855 by Rogers, Ketchum & Grosvenor in Paterson, New Jersey,[2] The General provided freight and passenger service between Atlanta, Georgia, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, before the Civil War on the Western and Atlantic Railroad of the State of Georgia and later, the Western and Atlantic Railroad Company.

[3] During the Civil War on April 12, 1862, The General was commandeered by Northerners led by James J. Andrews at Big Shanty (now Kennesaw, Georgia), and abandoned north of Ringgold, after being pursued by William Allen Fuller and the Texas.

Low on water and wood, the General eventually lost steam pressure and speed, and slowed to a halt two miles north of Ringgold, where Andrews and his raiders abandoned the locomotive and tried to flee.

During this time, the W&A had a locomotive surplus after buying several more modern engines, so they leased the General to the A&F from 1887 to 1888 to assist in construction.

Early the next year, E. Warren Clark, a professional photographer, discovered the engine in Vinings, and approached John W. Thomas, president of the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway (which had won the lease on the Western and Atlantic Railroad of the State of Georgia in 1890), with the proposal of restoring the General for exhibition at the upcoming World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

Thomas approved of the idea, and the General was soon taken to the NC&StL Ry Shops at West Nashville to be restored.

This trip made apparent the difficulties associated with wood burning, so the engine was returned to a coal burner by the end of the year.

The engine was given a unique new stack at this time, one that, while designed for coal burning, was styled like the original so as to give the appearance of a wood burner.

Throughout the 1960s, the engine pulled Louisville and Nashville Combine Car Number 665 as it traveled to various places across the eastern US, including the 1964 New York World's Fair under its own power.

The latter upheld Wilson's ruling, and the city appealed once more, sending the case to the Supreme Court of the United States.

The General was stored in Louisville during the legal dispute, only being publicly displayed over a weekend in November 1969, at the opening of the Kentucky Truck Assembly in the city's O'Bannon neighborhood,[7] and again in November 1971, when it was displayed in the city's Union Station alongside the road's newer diesel engine no.