Over the past few evenings, Meg and I have been enjoying binge-watching our way through a DVD reissue set of the 1960s TV Series, “The Wild, Wild West”. We both really liked it as kids, we’re both fans of cheapo western action serials of the 30’s and 40’s, and this series borrows very heavily from that cannon (literally–it was shot at CBS Radford, AKA the old Republic Studios lot–home of a very distinctive old western street set, along with props and sets previously used by John Wayne, Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, The Three Mesquiteers, Andy Devine, etc.). Compared to Republic serials, the CBS western shows were high budget–not a lot of reused footage, better writing, much better bad guys, and a much greater supply of breakaway bottles, chairs, windows, and pianos were consumed in the course of the fight scenes.
Private RR car fans frequently single out this TV show as the main reason why they first became interested in the dream of owning their own private railroad car. Like any Homeric hero story, a lot of attention gets paid to the hero’s means of transportation. Heroes always need unusual rides–Jason had the Argo, Christ had a donkey, Batman had the Batmobile, Roy had Trigger, and Kirk had the Enterprise. In “The Wild Wild West”, James West and his assistant Artemus Gordon cruise the Old West in “the Wanderer” an 1870s era wooden private car that typically traveled in a train with another car (a stable and workshop car). Never seen, but implied in the story, they traveled with a locomotive engineer, brakeman and a conductor–they must have slept in the coal bunker and survived on cans of sardines. The Wild, Wild West makes it look like a very suave and sophisticated way for a secret agent cowpoke to get around the prairie. West and Gordon had lots of cool stuff on the car: hidden maps, telegraphy equipment, a chemistry lab, carrier pigeons, guns, explosives. Never had any trouble talking their dates into coming back to the car for some brandy, a private car will have that affect on a lass.
The exterior shots of the train show an engine and two cars that were originally owned by the Virginia and Truckee Railroad. In the 1930s, they were part a large set of railroad equipment acquired by Paramount Pictures which appeared in many movies in the 40s and 50s. In the 1960s, Paramount sold the entire collection off, but happily, much of it wound up being saved and has found their way into museums. West’s loco and cars are currently at the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City.
Though the exteriors were nicely painted for the show, the cars were very plain on the inside, and their interiors were never used in the series. The opulent Victorian Baroque car private car interiors seen in the show existed only as studio sets, but most historical rail equipment fans will remark about the strong resemblance between the sets, and well-circulated, published photos of the interiors of “The Gold Coast”, and the “Virginia City”–the two railroad cars owned by newspaper columnist Lucius Beebe and his partner Charles Clegg.
Beebe and Clegg’s first railroad car, the “Gold Coast” operated into the 1950s. At that point railroads had started to object to handling older wooden cars made prior to 1910, and put pressure on the pair to come up with a newer car. As a result, they built the Virginia City–a heavyweight-era open-platform Pullman car that had served lounge car on the Overland limited. Their friend, Hollywood production designer Robert Hanley, came up with the Baroque design for the interior, and along the way, found a method to make a fireplace work on a railroad car. Today, the “Gold Coast” can be found at the California Railroad Museum in Sacramento, while the Virginia City continues to carry passengers, and occupy the rearmost position on Amtrak Trains, privately owned and operated by Wade Pellizer. More information can be found at the Virginia City site: http://www.vcrail.com/vchistory_railcars.htm
