Due respect to Bob and the Kennesaw folks, but the original GENERAL ceased to exist during the occupation of Atlanta when the Confederates blew it up at the head of an ammunition train as the Yankees approached.

The remains were salvaged and some parts theoretically used in a rebuilding which retained the name but took on a different form. This version of GENERAL worked for a couple decades until set aside for scrapping on a siding and was subsequently rescued for preservation.

In 1960 - 61 the L&N again substantially rebuilt it making many more changes but largely retaining its then current outward appearance which not only postdated the Andrews Raid but also the demolition / rebuild.

Having been through all the documentation in the Kennesaw museum several years ago, as well as a hands on inspection, I cannot verify the quantity of remaining fabric which may have been in the original / Andrews Raid era locomotive still present, nor can I state with any degree of certainty that the old parts weren't that of another similar hapless steamer caught in the blast when Atlanta was exploded.

Sure does look pretty and makes a nice romantic story though.

dave

irondave@bellsouth.net

Keaton had an agreement with the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway to use the General for filming on railroad property near Chattanooga (possibly the old Tracy City Branch). However, he let it out in a statement to the press that the movie would be a comedy. The railroad's offices were flooded with complaints, some of them reportedly very nasty. Because of the public outcry, the railroad informed Keaton that it would not honor its previous agreement. With no locomotive, no location and with much of the southern populace stirred up, he probably had no choice but to go west to film.

awalker1829@yahoo.com

According to information presented in Randall V. Mills book Railroads Down the Valley, Some Short Lines of the Oregon Country, the three locomotives used in the filming were as follows:

The General was played by Oregon Pacific & Eastern #4, a Cooke 4-4-0 built in 1886 for the Oregon Pacific Railroad as their #4; to Corvallis & Eastern #4; to Oregon & Southeastern (original name of the OP&E) #4 1902; sold to J.H. Chambers #4, wrecked and scrapped 1941.

The Texas, the locomotive wrecked in the movie who's remains are still in the Rowe River, was played by OP&E #5. The #5 was built by Baldwin in 1881 for the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company as their #44; to Union Pacific #529; to Oregon Railway & Navigation #58; to Mt. Hood Railroad #1; to OP&E #5. Apparently purchased for the movie work.

The Yonah (the first locomotive used by the Confederates to chase the General) was played by Oregon Pacific & Eastern #3, which was a Cooke 2-6-0 built in 1873 for the Virginia & Truckee Railroad as their #16. Locomotive sold to Oregon Railroad & Navigation #40; to Union Pacific #1381; to Oregon Railroad & Navigation #18; to Salem Falls City & Western #3; to Oregon & Southeastern #3; Oregon Pacific & Eastern #3. Locomotive purchased by O&SE (OP&E) 1909.

The Oregon & Southeastern started construction on this railroad out of Cottage Grove in 1902, heading for the mines of the Bohemia Mining District in the Cascade mountains. However, the mines played out before the railroad reached them, and it survived on lumber for the balance of it's life. The Oregon & Southeastern was re-named the Oregon Pacific & Eastern in 1914 after the lumbermen who depended on the line took over. The OP&E would be featured in at least two other movies, Emporer of the North (mid-1970's) and Stand By Me (1985). The OP&E lost it's major shipper in 1991 but continued to run sporadically until the spring of 1995, when all operations ceased. The right-of-way is now a hiking trail, managed by the Oregon State Park system.

Hope this helps.

JD Moore
Elko, NV


jamoore@elko.net

Thanks for the very informative post.

>The Texas, the locomotive wrecked in the movie >who's remains are still in the Rowe River, was >played by OP&E #5. The #5 was built by Baldwin >in 1881

Was the "Texas" that went into the river the same "Texas" that appeared throughout the film?

I've often thought that the locomotive that played the "Texas" throughout the movie looked like it had been back-dated.

So Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin were fighting over the same stretch of railroad?

Always interesting stuff here!


SJHussar@aol.com

The old museum housing the General re-opened last spring as the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History. If ya like more info, go to Southernmuseum.org

SMCWLH
blueridge82@hotmail.com

>>>>The OP&E lost it's major shipper in 1991 but continued to run sporadically until the spring of 1995, when all operations ceased. The right-of-way is now a hiking trail, managed by the Oregon State Park system.

So I am asuming that they tore up the tracks? What about that huge trestle in Stand By Me? Status, anyone?

ordway1440@aol.com

For those interested in movies about the Andrews Raid, one of the best references presently available is "The General and The Texas" by Stan Cohen and Col. James G. Bogle. The last chapter of the book is dedicated to the "The General" by Buster Keaton and "The Great Locomotive Chase" by Walt Disney. The chapter provides a great deal of factual information about the production of both movies and some nice on-set photographs.

awalker1829@yahoo.com

> So I am asuming that they tore up the
> tracks? What about that huge trestle in
> Stand By Me? Status, anyone?

That was the McCloud River Railroad...

teamzurg@earthlink.net

I'd like to reply to the question about which locomotive was the Texas in the movie "The General" and which ended up in the Row River. If you watch the movie carefully, you'll discover that the movie crew redressed each locomotive several times. One locomotive had no trim rings on the steam dome, and they had distinctive differences, like spoked and solid pilot wheels, so it becomes obvious on close study that different locos played both the Texas and the General. Terry Gookin of Salem and Lloyd Palmer did a frame by frame examination trying to work out which engine played which locomotive in which scene. I hope Terry sees this and posts what their results were...


fatpiecat2@charter.net

Stand By Me was filmed partly on the OP&E and partly on the McCloud River.

The sequence where one of the kids plays chicken with the train...that was on the OP&E. There was another scene that showed the boys waking up to a passing train, that too was the OP&E. All of these shots used OP&E #19, a 90-ton Baldwin 2-8-2 logging mikado (built 1915, c/n 42000 for Caddo & Choctaw Railroad #4; to Caddo River Lumber #4; to a mexican mining firm; to McCloud River Railroad #19 1924; to Yreka Western Railroad #19 1953; to Oregon Pacific & Eastern #19 1970; to Yreka Western #19 1988). This locomotive operated regularly on the YW (normally five days a week) from 1989 up until two or three years ago, when the new boiler regs forced it out of service. The YW has been making slow but steady progress bringing the engine into compliance with the new regs, but other priorities (like track maintenance) have slowed work on this locomotive. The company planned to complete work on the #19 in time for it to be in operation by this summer, but the Tunnel 13 fire on the Central Oregon & Pacific and the resulting loss of most of YW's freight business has killed any chance of that happening.

The scene of the kids being chased across the bridge by the train was shot on the McCloud River Railroad's Lake Britton Bridge about fifteen miles northeast of Burney, CA. The locomotive used here was McCloud River's #25, an Alco 2-6-2 built new for the road in 1925. There were a couple other shots filmed on the McCloud that made the film, including one long shot of the boys walking down the tracks by the Bartle tank.

One humorous event that happened during the filming of the movie at the Lake Britton bridge; they had the camera set up between the rails just off the bridge. They took many shots of the #25 coming across the bridge towards the camera, as well as shots of the kids running across the bridge; the kids were later dubbed in front of the #25. On one of the shots coming across the bridge the camera crew kept telling the engineer to come ahead; the engineer warned that he was going to hit the camera, but was overruled by the photo crew. One of the Burney newspapers has a fantastic series of shots that they bring out from time to time showing the #25 approaching the camera with the camera man behind the camera; the #25 almost on top of the camera with the rear end of the camera man sprinting away on the left side of the frame; then a couple shots of the camera disappearing under the pilot of the #25.

Once Trainweb.org comes back on line, check out my website below; the front page photo is of a McCloud River freight traversing the Lake Britton bridge. The rock band Aerosmith filmed a music video on this bridge about 1993 using McCloud's SD38-2 #39 and a bunch of boxcars.

When you watch the movie, watch the ballast. Shots with gray ballast were filmed on the OP&E; shots with red cinder ballast were filmed on the McCloud River.

The McCloud River operates today as the McCloud Railway Company; the OP&E was completely removed by 1995 and is now a bike trail.

JD Moore
Elko, NV

McCloud Rails homepage
jamoore@elko.net

There is one important fact that you won't see in the movie concerning the locomotives. Two of the locomotives used were OP&E locomotives, but a third 4-4-0 was obtained from a nearby logging railroad. The third locomotive was a back up unit, to be wrecked in the bridge collapse scene. However, upon inspection it was found that the back up locomotive was in better mechanical condition than the principal locomotive. This resulted in a change in plans and the back up locomotive became the principal Texas while the principal Texas became the back up and doubled as a USMRR locomotive. While the movie was very artistic, it was a financial failure for Keaton and the production company, getting poor reviews and only grossing $474,264 domestically.

awalker1829@yahoo.com

> There is more mis-information floating around about "The General" than any other movie I've ever heard about. To this day I still read articles about the movie written by people who should have known better that the movie was filmed "on the location of the actual events" using the "genuine locomotives", or if they get it partially right, they quote that it was filmed on a "narrow gauge" railroad in Oregon, using the genuine locomotives. Sigh. I am glad nobody here is spreading those myths. I wonder if there could be a shooting script or other documents that show where the different scenes were filmed. Local folklore tells us that the three locos used in the film were sent to Gerlinger Locomotive Works in Dallas to be refurbished and to be "backdated". If you look carefully in the movie you can see how they cut away parts of the steel cabs, and covered some modern (1920's) appliances behind tin shields in an attempt to make the locos look older than they really were, and to facilitate filming in the loco cabs by widening the opening to the tender. Folk lore also tells us that while the locos were at Dallas, they did some filming up at Black Rock. If you recall the scene where the wreckers are crossing a high trestle and toss wood down on Buster to try to derail his train, and the wood lands in his tender, there is no known location of the O.C.& E. where there is a high trestle with tracks running under it. However, just outside of Black Rock, there was a place on a logging branch where there was a line down in the valley floor that was crossed by another line on a high trestle. I suspect this scene was filmed there.

fatpiecat2@charter.net

Check out Mr. Keaton's comments under the heading "INFORMAL FILM-MAKING" near the bottom of this page:

Buster Keaton interview, etc.
bilburns1313@tds.net

Its time to set the record straight on Buster Keaton`s movie "The General". I have researched this subject for over twenty five years, visited the O.P.& E. Ry. many times both before and after the rails were removed, interviewed everyone I could find who knew anything of interest including a man whose family owned the machine shop that prepared the locomotives for the movie, a man who met Buster Keaton during the filming, a man who owned the sawmill served by the OP&E and remembers the scrapping of the trestle crash locomotive, and I have specifically concentrated on collecting locomotive photographs and engine rosters of early equipment here in Oregon. Here are my findings so far: There is NO LOCOMOTIVE or any part of it left in the river. That myth continues because of the picture caption on page 99 in George Abdill`s book "This Was Railroading" which states that after plunging "through a burning trestle her rusting remains lie in the Row River to this day". The true fact is that the engine and tender were left where they fell after the movie from 1926 until the scrap drives to recover metal for World War 2 some time in the 1940`s (exact date unknown), a period of at least fifteen years. By the time Abdill`s book was printed in 1958 the engine had aleady been gone from the river for fifteen years or more. I have a photograph of Buster standing on the tender of the engine after the crash where the locomotive is resting on the far bank of the river and most of the tender is also out of the water. The cab is gone, the bell,whistle and stack have been removed and from my own personal experience the creek at that time of late summer is at a low enough level that a man could wade all the way across at about waist deep. The crash site is not actually on the Row River but upstream on a smaller stream called Culp Creek. At the time of the filming the water level was so low that the movie company built a dam above the tresle crash site so sufficient water could be released to create the effect Keaton wanted. The Army Corps of Engineers built a dam on the Row River in 1940 creating Dorena Lake which is about five miles long. While a portion of the OP&E line was rerouted around the lake this really has no significant bearing on the story of " The General". The backwater of the reservior is about eight miles downstream from the trestle crash site and there is NO POSSIBLE WAY FOR THERE TO BE ANY LOCOMOTIVE SUBMERGED IN THE LAKE. Addtional corrections of interest regarding the photo on page 119 in Kramer Adams book "Logging Railroads of the West" is that the photograph shown is not of the movie crash scene but an actual train wreck on the Currin Bridge of the OP&E line on June 5, 1909 where all 15 passengers and crew members were injured. The engine shown is not a Baldwin but the Cooke, serial #1728 , which would be repaired and go on to play the General. This is where she lost her original wooden cab and gained the odd looking homemade cone shaped steam dome cover that lasted until the engine was scrapped in 1941. Sharp eyed viewers of the movie have already caught the switch of the engine "Texas" for the crash scene, which is a whole story of itself. Another important correction should be that AT NO TIME DO ANY OF THE CELEBRATED VIRGINIA AND TRUCKEE ENGINES APPEAR ANYWHERE IN THIS MOVIE. The OP&E (O&SE)bought V&T #16, the Ophir, Cooke #885, in 1907 and it was used on that line through at least 1915 by then owners J. H. Chambers Lumber. It was believed to have been scrapped there but the exact date is unknown. It was discussed before the movie was actually made but nowhere in the entire film is there any locomotive named the "Yonah" or with a 2-6-0 wheel arrangement. So the V&T #16 DOES NOT APPEAR IN THE MOVIE and this correction should be made for those interested the engine rosters of Ted Wurm`s " Silver Short Line", Karl Koening`s "V&T Locomotives", Randall Mill`s "Railroads Down The Valleys" , etc. One final important correction that I feel should be made is regarding remarks made by Buster Keaton himself made during a television interview late in his life. He stated that he chose Oregon to duplicate the scenery for his movie because " the whole state is honey-combed with narrow gauge railways for all the lumber mills". The original Western and Atlantic Railroad ,home of the real General, was built to a gauge of five feet during the Civil War, it was never a narrow gauge. Oregon had many logging and lumber lines almost none of which were ever narrow gauge, except for the Sumpter Valley, in the high desert area of the northeastern part of the state. Keaton was known for wanting to use as historically accurate equipment for the period as possible and deserves the greatest praise for his stunt work and fact that he was his own engineer, fireman, and brakeman. Anyone who has ever worked on or around this type of equipment knows he literally risked his life and limbs in making this movie. The movie, while not a huge financial successs, has been rated one of the ten best movies of all time and Keaton one of the twelve best dierctors. I hope this helps answer some of your questions before everyone heads to Oregon looking for another "sunken" or "lost in the woods locomotive".

TerryGookin@aol.com