If I remember right, I used to wonder how he got his tires to squeal on gravel roads.
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"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
There was one episode where the bad guy gets off an SP train that about 6 baggage cars. Yes, and if you take away all the scenes where he puts on his fedora and barks, "Lets go!" You'd be down to maybe 29 episodes.
I recall a movie where a man gets off a train in a dusty California town. He goes into the first record shop he sees and asks for a copy of the song, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance." He had no luck. Every other record shop he visited did not have a copy. No one would talk to him about it. He got back aboard the train and realized, there truly was a town without Pitney.
Most of the filming was done in the then still rural San Fernando and Simi Valley, also Griffith Park / Bronson Canyon area. Alot of rail activity was still prevalent in those valley locations in those days.
And if you cut out all the scenes of Crawford chewing into the radio "21-50 to HQ" you'd be down to 32 episodes
Have fun with your trains
You will find at least two episodes have SP passenger trains in them. The filming of the series was pre interstate highways. Most of the filming was done in Southern California.
Thanks for that. It is interesting viewing, dusty orange groves, roadside diners, oil fields. No freeways. I imagine we're seeing what the Joads would have seen when they came to pick peaches. Now, where's that roadside restaurant where Lana Turner worked?
Yeah, and if they took out all the scenes of fat old Buicks backing up, they'd be down to about 33 episodes!
PE did lease from SP a variety of diesels (and in a earlier era, steam) equipped with poles to activate signals and grade crossing circuits so this was a common sight as electric freight operations waned in the fifties, to my eye, most of these episodes appear to have been filmed in the then undeveloped San Fernando Valley, yet PE had virtually ceased operations with the exception of a isolated section, so what's that leave? Burbank, a remote possibilty, or it could be Dominguez Yard which was rural at the time and was one location that employed diesel/electric operations.
Dave
If you edited out the superfluous scenes showing Chief Mathews getting in and out of a squad car, you would have 37 episodes. Hopefully, no car had a tail fin touch the trolley wire during filming.
I just bought the complete season 3 of this legendary program of the nineteen fifties. 39 episodes, can you believe that? Not like today! Anyone, in one of them, there is a car chase through a railway yard and it has trolley wire! I can't make out the electric loco sitting on the track but on an adjacent track is what looks like an SW-1. My question is, was there an electric freight railroad in Southern California back then, or would it be a service yard for the Pacific Electric?
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