Nationally renowned actor George Clooney made a special trip to Chattanooga on Monday to film scenes for his new movie, Leatherheads.

The actor wasn’t drawn by the area’s scenic beauty, downtown development or bucolic atmosphere. He was here because Leathernecks’ script calls for him to ride a 1920’s-era train pulled by a working steam engine, and Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum is one of the few places around where that can be done.

“People don’t realize what a treasure the railroad museum is,” said Chris Holley, a member of the fledgling Chattanooga Film Commission. “It’s unique . . . Probably three out of every four calls I get from people who are interested in filming here come from somebody who wants shots of a steam locomotive in operation.”

Other locales have steam locomotives, she said, but often they don’t actually work. Instead, they are pushed from place to place by diesel engines.

“You obviously cannot film a long shot of a train pulled by a steam engine, with steam rolling back over the rail cars, if there’s a diesel locomotive at the back pushing it,” she said.

The local railroad museum also offers film crews two 1920s-era train stations, a working turntable, a trestle, a tunnel and more than three miles of track which runs through a variety of types of scenery.

Leatherheads isn’t the first movie to feature TVRM trains and volunteers.

In 2004, Heaven’s Fall, a movie about the Scottsboro Boys which starred Timothy Hutton, was filmed at the museum. That movie has yet to be released. But another 2004 effort – HBO’s Warm Springs about the late President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in which TVRM trains were prominent – was voted the Best TV Movie of the Year.

TVRM’s Steve Freer said members of Leathernecks’ art department arrived here over the weekend, to set things up for Monday’s filming. The crew scouted various neighborhoods through which the TVRM tracks pass, looking for areas that would fit into a 1920s setting.

The areas where they chose to shoot included a wooded area near Missionary Ridge, Stephens Street near Chamberlain Avenue, and Chickamauga Creek.

He said filming Monday began soon after Clooney and his crew arrived around 9 a.m., and continued until they finally left around midnight. The work day was so long that TVRM brought in two sets of volunteers to run the train, he noted.

The day crew included locomotive engineer Paul Brock, fireman Brian Hunt and conductor Bill Larson. Evening crew members including engineer David Pugh, fireman Ryan Miller, helper Zach Gilmore and conductor Tim Butler.

The equipment used during filming for the movie is the same equipment seen by hundreds of visitors to the railroad museum each year when they ride the train.

In fact, if visitors come to the museum this weekend – when TVRM’s 2007 season will officially begin – they can ride the same train that George Clooney rode, according to Mr. Freer.

According to Ms. Holley, when she first talked with representatives of Leatherheads about the possibility of filming here last fall, Chattanooga offered many of the features they were looking for: a 1920s era hotel such as the Read House, streets that still looked much the same as they did some 80 years ago, a football field from the same time period, and a working steam train.

Nevertheless, filmmakers wound up shooting most of the scenes for Leatherheads in South Carolina, because that state offers movie companies far more lucrative incentives than does Tennessee. Limited filming will be done in North Carolina, which also offers better incentives, she noted.

“Incentives really rule,” she noted.

Had it not been for the railroad museum, she said, “they probably wouldn’t have come here at all.”

Tennessee is now in the process of putting together an improved incentives package that “would not be a burden to the state, but would be attractive to film makers and easy for them to use,” she said.