Greetings family, friends and neighbors! A classic Sierra Railroad locomotive, a movie prop, and three amusement park trains are the topic of today's Historic Snippet....Five Cannonballs. 

Circa 1960's vintage postcard: Petticoat Junction Railroad, Panama City Beach, Florida 

Historic Snippets 

FIVE CANNONBALLS 

C&FW RAILROAD lettered on the Sierra Railroad movie locomotive #3 and tender didn’t stand for an actual railroad but according to show creator Paul Henning, may have stood for “Charley and Floyd’s Wacky Railroad”, engineer and fireman aboard the Hooterville Cannonball. The long running popular 

sitcom, Petticoat Junction, spinoff from Henning’s The Beverley Hillbillies, takes place at the isolated rural Shady Rest Hotel run by Kate Bradley, her three daughters, and Uncle Joe Carson. Located midway on the Hooterville to Pixley spur line, the hotel was cut off from the C&FW mainline by the demolition of a trestle twenty years earlier. 

The opening scenes of Sierra #3 and combine #5 at the iconic water tank seen for two hundred and twenty two episodes aired between 1963 and 1970 by Filmways, Inc. and CBS Productions, was shot in and around Sierra Railroad’s Jamestown, CA rail yard, along with stock footage and specific scenes for particular episodes. All other scenes featuring the cannonball and combine were shot on a sound stage in Hollywood of a Rio Grande Southern replica locomotive built by the 20th Century Fox prop shop for the 1949 film, A Ticket to Tomahawk. The facade and interior of the Hotel were also shot on a sound stage along with preserved trees and bushes, grass mats and painted backdrop. 

A scale model diorama was added in the fourth season for filming exteriors of the Shady Rest, train stop and water tank. A third cannonball, created from a narrow gauge 1912 Porter Locomotive, was not used in the popular sitcom, but was the focal point of an authorized Petticoat Junction amusement park at Panama City Beach, Florida. “Tornado”, a wooden roller coaster, a collection of off-the-shelf flat carnival rides and two additional cannonballs were added to the parks roster between 1966 and 1984 when the once thriving park was demolished and replaced with a Walmart. The three cannonballs were auctioned off to private collectors, the replica cannonball has been restored to its original appearance and is on display in Durango, and Sierra #3, “The Movie Queen”, awaits patiently in Jamestown for her next gig. 

-Bill 3/25