Greetings family, friends and train buddies!  Today's rambling is about several Hollywood movie studios that had their own "short line" railroads for shooting Westerns.....Bill

Railroad Ramblings

HOLLYWOOD’S SHORTLINE RAILROADS

The Great Train Robbery, an Edison film directed by Edwin S.

Porter in 1903 set the stage for all the western movies that

followed. Interior shots were filmed out of sequence at Edison’s

New York studio while exteriors were filmed on location in New

Jersey on the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad.

Trains have provided drama and laughs for all types of films for

decades but as the years passed it became increasingly difficult

for movie studios to locate suitable vintage steam locomotives.

Instead they began “dressing” newer equipment to look old, or

occasionally seek out vintage railroads that still operated older

equipment. Paramount, Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, RKO, Warner

Bros, and Twentieth Century-Fox began purchasing steam

locomotives, passenger and freight cars in 1937 for their own films,

or lease them to smaller studios. Several studios even built there

own “short line” railroads on their back lots rather than having the

expense of shipping heavy equipment and shooting on remote

locations. RKO had a 1800 ft. long “railroad” at their Encino Ranch

in the San Fernando Valley where they operated Virginia &

Truckee locomotive No.25 and their collection of vintage

equipment for dozens of western films.

Paramount purchased the 1875 4-4-0 locomotive Inyo, No.22,

from The Virginia & Truckee Railroad to add to their growing

stable of vintage steam equipment for use in filming westerns.

M- G-M leased No.22, a car and two V&T historic Brill coaches

from Paramount in 1945 and had them trucked to their Hollywood

back Lot 3 Western Street for the filming oh Harvey Girls. Re-

lettered as Santa Fe, the vintage equipment was operated on the

lot’s 1100 ft. “mainline” , which was just long enough for the three

car train to appear to get in and out of “Sand Rock, New Mexico”

(with 250 ft. to spare!). In order to change directions for the

filming, No. 22 turned with a large overhead crane while the

consist remained unchanged.

RKO’s Encino Ranch was replaced by a major Los Angeles River

flood control project, M-G-M’s Lot 3 was demolished and is now a

large housing complex, and V&T No. 22 was returned home and is

on display at the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City.

V&T No.11 continued to receive TV work into the early 1980’s at

Arizona’s Old Tucson Studios but was seriously damaged in a

1995 fire. Cosmetically repaired, No.11 occasionally receives

motion picture work as a static background prop on it’s 700 ft,

short line railroad.

Circa 1940’s postcard from the collection of Bill Ralph

“The story of the early-day Harvey Girls is being told on the screen in a new

Metro-Goldwyn Mayer Technicolor musical production, starring Judy Garland.

“THE HARVEY GIRLS” tells how Fred Harvey waitresses of the 1800’s

brought romance and a civilizing influence to a typical frontier town