Greetings family, friends and train buddies!  Today's brief rambling is about an unusual California railroad that you may never have heard of.......until today.

Railroad Ramblings

FIDDLETOWN & COPPEROPOLIS RAILWAY

The Fiddletown & Copperopolis Railway operated between the two sleepy Mother Lode towns in the waning days of the California Gold Rush. Chartered as an uncommon carrier, construction of the slim gauge operation got underway at Mad River Canyon with the Golden Spike ceremony taking place at Bicarbonate of Soda Springs. It wasn’t long before tragedy struck at Tehachet Loop when Low-Water Hogan mistook his own caboose for another train and “joined the birds”. An unexpected derailment at Gloomy Gulch slowed rail traffic as did the lines new luxurious business car that was a little too snug to fit through Tunnel No. 2. Happily the Dopey Dilldock Gang only got away with $1.75 and two Jugs of corn during the iinfamous Buzzards Roost Great Train Robbery. Forlorn Flats, Beanpot, Grizzly Gulch, Hog Leg, Saggy Springs and Dismal Diggings were just a few of the colorful locations found along the winding sixty mile route.

Fiddletown and Copperopolis are actual mining camps that were around in during the 1849 California Gold Rush, however they were only connected by railroad in the mind and the drawings of writer/cartoonist and narrow gauge railroad enthusiast Carl Fallberg whose comical Fiddletown & Copperopolis comic strip first appeared in Railroad Magazine in 1950. Fallberg’s extensive and prolific career began at Walt Disney Studios in 1935 where he worked as an assistant director and inventive storyman on Snow White, Fantasia, Bambi, and where shared a passion for narrow gauge steam railroading with co-worker and train buddy Ward Kimball. His fifty five year professional career evolved from writing Disney Comic Books for Dell Publishing, Western Publishing, and Gold Key Comics to TV scripts for virtually every classic Disney, Hanna-Barbera, and Warner Brothers cartoon character.

In 1960 Carl Fallberg compiled his collection of amusing railroad cartoons from the 1950’s and published Fiddletown & Copperopolis-The Life and Times of an uncommon Carrier that is still in print from Hungerford Press. The wacky characters, silly drama, and unlikely situations continue to this day on the narrow gauge rails between the Fiddletown and Copperopolis.

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