This was sent to me by a friend in our industry who finds and seeks out old photos and movies. This is not standard gauge. The action starts at about 3:00 minutes into the clip. The clip is about 14:00 minutes long. A fun story and well worth the watch.

The street running of this train is fascinating in and of itself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uArLF-B8pgE

For those of you who enjoyed that clip, you may want to check out our new replica Cagney Locomotive in operation on the Hiawatha Live Steamers. There are two versions of this video, one with music, one with-out.

They can be seen here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me_R4g3 ... AD3c9SEJDw


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x-zXM4 ... AD3c9SEJDw

It would be fun to start a thread of old movies like the first one I posted of footage never before seen. Fun stuff.

Kindly,

John, that 1920s flick is one heck of a find! It features the Venice Miniature Railway of Venice, Ca. They actually used those small locomotives and cars as their transit system for a time.

http://www.westland.net/venicehistory/articles/rail.htm

http://www.bjwrr.org/vmr/VMR-running-72.jpg

http://cdn.calisphere.org/data/13030/pw ... 3e2419.jpg

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/r ... ?10,824478

http://www.lincolnheightsla.com/lincoln ... astsrr.JPG

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthr ... ?p=5765823

The famous stuntman star, Harold Lloyd, shot a film there, too:

http://silentlocations.files.wordpress. ... rr-pan.jpg

http://silentlocations.wordpress.com/20 ... a-waves-2/

Enjoy--and ponder how railroads were once part of the landscape to be captured as part of everyday life in film like this.

As to the new Cagney--who says park trains aren't real trains?

Oh, man.

Leonard Maltin, in his two books about the Hal Roach "Our Gang/The Little Rascals," dedicated a chapter to "other" child-gang comedy series of the era, and remarked at how some of them were outrageously brazen rip-offs of the Hal Roach series, down to casting all the stock characters (freckled taller boy, fat boy, "Negro" boy, pretty blond girl, etc.) as look-alikes of the Roach kids (Mickey Daniels, Joe Cobb, Sammy Morrison, Mary Kornman, etc.).

I had to watch this for five minutes, and then double-check, to figure out whether this was somehow an elusive "missing" Hal Roach film. It's THAT brazen a rip-off.

This film also neatly demonstrates why American movie-makers originally resisted the transition to sound: the same short could be exported worldwide by simply switching the title cards for Dutch, German, French, Portuguese, French, Spanish, etc.; that ended with the coming of sound. Hal Roach and others initially tried having the kids deliver phonetically-taught lines in French and Spanish; that experiment ended after maybe a year.....

For being a "third-rate" comedy series, we have to admit that from a railfan standpoint this is an AMAZINGLY sophisticated "train comedy," easily on par with the epic "Railroadin'" and "Sun Down Limited" of Roach/Our Gang...... as well as an amazing, if inadvertent, documentary of the Venice Miniature RR....

http://www.lincolnheightsla.com/lincoln ... astsrr.JPG

This particular 2-6-0 locomotive predates the Venice Miniature Railway. It was designed and operated by John Coit for his East Lake Park Scenic Railway in 1903 near downtown Los Angeles. Albert Kinney saw the operation and hired Coit to build the Venice Miniature Railway in 1905. Motive power for the VMR were two 2-6-2 locomotives that were larger than the 2-6-0. Due to a delay in getting the second 2-6-2, Coit closed the East Lake operation and moved the three passenger cars and the 2-6-0 to Venice. Unfortunately, the 2-6-0 was underpowered and required doubleheading to handle the longer and heavier trains at Venice. Coit and Kinney had continuous disagreements over management of the VMR resulting in Coit returning the 2-6-0 and its three cars to East Lake in 1908.

Ironically, all three of these Coit designed 18" gauge locomotives still exist, in one form or another, after 100 years.

The 2-6-2 #1 is intact and remains in private ownership in Southern California.
The 2-6-2 #2 is operational at the Billy Jones Wildcat Railroad in Los Gatos, California. (I operated it last weekend).
The 2-6-0 #1903 is disassembled at my home and is a long term project for my family.

Ken

"The Little Train Robbery" 1905

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5iT5tr-bJY

Seems to be a parody of "The Great Train Robbery" made by the same company two years prior. Features a Cagney 4-4-0 in it's natural element.

Is the lighter tractive effort of no. 3 why it was never rebuilt for Billy Jones ?

I remember seeing its parts at Vasona shops.