What is that steam locomotive that is used in this 1960s CBS-TV Show?Make & model.Is the locomotive still around?
I know somebody who posts from a phone.
The quick answer is to Google "Hooterville Cannonball locomotive" which will deluge you in all the detail you could want. The full-size engine was Sierra Railroad #3, as noted for example here
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_No._3
but the RGS 20 replica used for soundstage filming has a much more interesting history; see here for some expert preservation discussion:
http://www.rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=38122&p=233249
That was Sierra Railroad #3, and it's still very much around.
Here's it's story, and it's quite a story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_No._3
Also, "Petticoat Junction" made use of a large in-studio mock-up of the cab area, and a model train for some of the running shots.
Sorry Overmod, I saw "I know someone who posts from a phone," wondered what that was all about, then went ahead. Then the rest of your post popped up when I wasn't looking!
Been a while since I've watched, did the show ever say the full name of the C&FW Railroad? One questionable online source gives "Chicago and Far Western", which is what I would have gone with had I been a writer.
I still dream of going for a swim in the water tower.......
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
SD70Dudedid the show ever say the full name of the C&FW Railroad?
Flintlock76Sorry Overmod, I saw "I know someone who posts from a phone," wondered what that was all about, then went ahead. Then the rest of your post popped up when I wasn't looking!
Some forums do indicate when 'new posts' have been made when you go to post; RyPN as I recall is one. Probably a useful utility, but not one Kalmbach IT is likely to find worth implementing here.
Overmod I still dream of going for a swim in the water tower....... Confess it: swimming is far from what you intend to do.
Confess it: swimming is far from what you intend to do.
Just like the show, this forum is G-rated. That's the most I can say.
I can just see you now, popping up on the stage-left side of those three, flipping your plaid shirt over the side of the tank, with a down-home grin on your face. I'd have one too.
I've alwys thought that the water tower scene in the credits was the inspiration for a cartoon that I saw in Playboy. A bunch of naked women are swimming around in a beer vat at a brewery. An executive walking by says to another, "No, we'll never reveal our secret ingredient."
And there's Uncle Joe, he's actin' kind of slow at the Junction!
SD70DudeI still dream of going for a swim in the water tower.......
And when I was watching that show on its first go-round I said to myself "Forget it! Those girls are too old for you!"
Now if I catch a re-run of the same I tell myself "Forget it! Those girls are too young for you!"
I just can't win.
They never give the full name.
Been rewatching my season 2 DVD's the past few evenings. I wish the last four seasons had a chance of being remastered and released, but it seems unlikely. They took full advantage of the singing talents of Meredith MacRae and Mike Minor in the later seasons, and CBS doesn't like paying for music licenses.
I treasure my official DVD sets of the first three seasons, although season 3 had a few small annoyances. Green Acres premiered that season and Oliver and Lisa Douglas cross over in several Petticoat Junction episodes, with a few seconds of background music from Green Acres being played at the start of their scenes.
But because Green Acres is today owned by MGM (And The Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction are CBS), all those musical bits such as when Oliver walks into Sam Drucker's store are replaced on the season 3 DVD set. And it's modern computer synthesized music they're using as substitutes, not background music from Petticoat Junction.
Not very seamless and it sticks out like a sore thumb in the 4 or 5 affected episodes.
In one of the Petticoat Junction episodes, someone said the locomotive was built by Rogers. The Wickipedia write-up says it was built by Rogers. On the side of the smokebox there is a Baldwin Locomotive builder's plate. As Andy Rooney used to say, "Why is that?"
_____________
"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
Two of the "girls" are in their mid-late 70s and the third (Meredith McRae) is deceased. Now I feel really old...
There were actually five girls. Three Billie Jo's, two Bobbie Jo's, and Linda Kaye Henning as Betty Jo.
We lost the first actress that played Bobbie Jo about five years ago (Pat Woodell from the opening two black & white seasons, before the show switched to color and Lori Saunders joined the cast).
It was especially sad though to lose Meredith MacRae at such a young age. Happened not terribly long after I discovered and fell in love with the show on TV Land in the mid 1990's (Died from a brain tumor, I believe). Mike Minor is sadly also no longer with us (The real life husband of Linda Kaye Henning that played her husband in the later seasons of the show).
Frank Cady (Sam Drucker) and Charles Lane (Homer Bedloe, a character that would be right at home in today's world of PSR) were both long lived and only died in recent years (About a decade ago or so). For two old men back when they were working on Petticoat Junction, they did pretty darn well in the longevity game.
Hopefully I don't jinx her, but I believe June Lockhart is still with us. The only older actor from Petticoat Junction that is still alive.
Paul of Covington In one of the Petticoat Junction episodes, someone said the locomotive was built by Rogers. The Wickipedia write-up says it was built by Rogers. On the side of the smokebox there is a Baldwin Locomotive builder's plate. As Andy Rooney used to say, "Why is that?"
That slighty bugged me, too. We can clearly see the builder's plate, but on the show it's referred to as a Rogers product such as in the episode where Homer Bedloe is going to sell the Cannonball to an eccentric railfan millionaire. Odd that they went with Rogers since we never get to see the builder's plate on Sierra #3, but regularly get to see the wooden hotel locomotive up close with the Baldwin plate.
Then in another episode they're going to celebrate the anniversary of the completion of the rail line by reenacting the signing of a treaty with the local Indians to secure the right of way. Charley Pratt (The engineer) is supposed to play the part of some railroad bigwig with the last name of Baldwin. Yet he doesn't know how to spell Baldwin even though it's on the builder's plate of his locomotive and he's a steam locomotive engineer.
A bit of a miss by the show's writers with that one, likely not realizing the special place that name had in railroading and the implausibility that a literate locomotive engineer wouldn't know how it's spelled. Would be like an airline pilot not knowing how Boeing is spelled. Not a pilot I'd want to fly with...
Smiley Burnette was a well-known Western movie actor, musician, and singer who wrote hundreds of songs. IIRC, oddly enough, at one time in the 1920's-30's he was in an LA-area band called The Beverly Hillbillies.
Linda Kaye Henning I believe became a studio tour guide at one of the major movie/TV studios?
Of course, Gunilla Hutton had a long run after Petticoat Junction appearing on "Hee Haw".
With TV shows from that time we really can't obsess too much about such things. Continuity wasn't something they paid too much attention to back then, especially with sitcoms, the philosophy was "We don't need it good, we need it next week!"
Get it in the can and get it to the network!
No-one was likely to quiz them about who built the locomotive besides railfans, so if they called it a Rogers one week and a Baldwin another week no-one cared.
Comes of having one engine for full-scale shots and a completely different one for the soundstage closeups... neither of which they owned. The difference in trailing-driver-axle spacing was far more glaring than any builder's plate disparity (and every time I read about this I chuckle thinking about that know-it-all kid in Polar Express attributing 1225 to Baldwin... ).
Flintlock76With TV shows from that time we really can't obsess too much about such things. Continuity wasn't something they paid too much attention to back then, especially with sitcoms, the philosophy was "We don't need it good, we need it next week!"
Well I'll be dagnabbed! I always thought sitcoms were accurate portrayals of real life.
Not to mention that they never had DVD's, streaming, Blu-Ray's, and so on in mind back in the day and reruns were barely a consideration. They were producing a weekly show without anticipating that they'd someday have fans that were all but memorizing them, binge watching them, etc.
It's easy to pick up errors the way we're able to now view some of these classics. But back in 1960, a new episode was aired once and sadly oftentimes that was it (Unlike today where you have a dozen chances over the next week or so of an episode premiering, have on-demand channels to catch up with a missed episode, etc). If you were lucky and the show was successful, they'd be reruns in the summer where you could catch up with an episode.
And if the show was a hit and wasn't a drama, it could enter syndication and be more widely seen (Most black & white dramas, even the huge hits like The Defenders, seemingly weren't viewed as having syndication value like most of the hit sitcoms were and sadly disappeared into the vaults; Only a few like Perry Mason seemed to manage to escape falling into obscurity).
Even then for a long running show like Petticoat Junction, it takes a long time to run through five seasons at around 30 episodes a season (While 7 seasons long, the great first two black & white seasons never entered syndication and remained out of view until remastered for DVD and eventually being seen on MeTV; Even today they're officially not available for syndication per the CBS Syndication Bible).
It's not as easy to notice the continuity mistakes when it could take half a year or more to rewatch the show.
Hmmmm....I remember the seasons as being 26 episodes long (one half year) for almost all shows (so you could show a full season of re-runs during the.Depending on the show, that's either 13 or 26 hours - binge watchable in a long day or a weekend. Of course, when you start talking about multiple seasons, all bets are off. BTW, the goal of a TV series for many years was to hit 100 episodes, as that's where people became interested in doing syndication of re-runs on a daily basis. And, hey, anybody remember the show "Union Pacific" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Pacific_(TV_series)
I don't remember the TV series Union Pacific but I do remember Iron Horse with dale Robertson.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Horse_(TV_series)
Don't forget that Hooterville figured in both the Petticoat Junction and Green Acres series.
Supposedly it was inspired by Eldon, MO, where the grandparents of the wife of the series creator Paul Henning lived. Supposedly.
BEAUSABRE Hmmmm....I remember the seasons as being 26 episodes long (one half year) for almost all shows (so you could show a full season of re-runs during the.Depending on the show, that's either 13 or 26 hours - binge watchable in a long day or a weekend. Of course, when you start talking about multiple seasons, all bets are off. BTW, the goal of a TV series for many years was to hit 100 episodes, as that's where people became interested in doing syndication of re-runs on a daily basis. And, hey, anybody remember the show "Union Pacific" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Pacific_(TV_series)
Most of Petticoat Junction was 30 episodes or more. Looking at my season 1-3 DVD sets for instance (The only seasons CBS has released), season 1 is 38 episodes, season 2 is 36 episodes, and season 3 is 34 episodes. The first two black & white seasons were seen in 1970 as holding no syndication value due to the lack of color and it wasn't until they were remastered and released on DVD in the late 2000's that they were seen again.
And I don't know if this is true, but have seen it said that CBS only bought the final season of Petticoat Junction (Season 7) in the midst of their infamous "rural purge", in order to have 5 seasons in color for syndication purposes.
They viewed that as the ideal size for syndication and in fact several longer running CBS controlled shows lost huge chunks of their legacy for decades in syndication since CBS didn't want the syndication package of a show to have too many episodes.
My Three Sons for instance had 7 color seasons (After 5 b&w seasons), but CBS for decades didn't offer the second half of season 11 and all of season 12 in order to keep down the episode count for the syndication package (Which also excluded all the b&w episodes).
And these days it's only seasons 6-10 that are advertised as available in the CBS Syndication Bible, so it's apparently gotten worse.
MidlandMike I don't remember the TV series Union Pacific but I do remember Iron Horse with dale Robertson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Horse_(TV_series)
Yeah, I remember that one too. Blah. I liked Dale Robertson in everything he was in, but there wasn't a hell of a lot of "iron horse" in Iron Horse, mostly cowboys-Indians-bad guys stuff, almost no train action.
Now when I was a little boy there was a TV series called Casey Jones starring Alan Hale Jr. as Casey. Lots of train action in that one! Turned me into a steam freak for life! You can find it pretty easily with a YouTube search. Aimed at kids, don't expect a lot of serious railroad authenticily, but like I said lots of action!
Here's a brief look.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hps6L5vS0sc
And yes, that's Sierra RR #3, the "Petticoat Junction" locomotive.
Flintlock76 Now when I was a little boy there was a TV series called Casey Jones starring Alan Hale Jr. as Casey.
Now when I was a little boy there was a TV series called Casey Jones starring Alan Hale Jr. as Casey.
He presumably never made "a three hour run" in that series...
Erik_Mag Flintlock76 Now when I was a little boy there was a TV series called Casey Jones starring Alan Hale Jr. as Casey. He presumably never made "a three hour run" in that series...
And he didn't have to bother with all the Howell's baggage either!
cat992c What is that steam locomotive that is used in this 1960s CBS-TV Show?Make & model.Is the locomotive still around?
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