The General, designed by William Hudson and built in 1855 for the Western and Atlantic Railroad, became famous during the Civil War when it was hijacked from Big Shanty, Georgia, by a group of disguised Union soldiers on April 12, 1862. The highly publicized raid, immortalized in Walt Disney's The Great Locomotive Chase, proved to have been in vain when Southerners chased the General down and recaptured the locomotive.