Road To Hollywood Preview

After years of talking, planning, and building, the “wedding of the rails” at Promontory Summit, Utah on May 10, 1869 immediately became a hallmark of American culture. It came to symbolize both America’s Manifest Destiny and recovery from the Civil War.

Three photographers captured the event on film, and telegraphers broadcast it live to the expectant nation. Artists immediately portrayed the driving of the last spike in heroic illustrations, and authors turned the history into legend. Hollywood first told the story in 1924 with the silent epic The Iron Horse, which was filmed in the dead of winter near Wadsworth, Nevada.

Because most of the old locomotives and cars were gone by the time The Iron Horse was filmed, that almost became the only motion picture about the construction of the Pacific Railroad. However, Paramount Pictures discovered the Virginia & Truckee Railway in 1937 while searching for authentic props for western films. In Carson City they found the locomotives and cars they needed to make Cecil B. DeMille’s Union Pacific.

Virginia & Truckee locomotives Inyo and Dayton first played the roles of the CP’s Jupiter and the UP’s 119 in Union Pacific’s last spike scene. One participant, who had been at Promontory in 1869, stated that DeMille attracted a larger crowd that the actual event seventy years before.

Along with modern equipment from the Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, and Santa Fe railroads, the old Nevada railroad equipment used in Union Pacific participated in the opening festivities of the new Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal in May 1939.

The very first train to depart the new station was a publicity special carrying Union Pacific cast and crew to the film’s premier at Omaha, Nebraska. The train consisted of two brand new GE steam turbine-electric locomotives and modern cars, but it was led by the Dayton, and five former V&T cars brought up the rear. The train ran from Los Angeles to Boston and return, stopping at the World’s Fair in New York City and Washington D.C. Over 4 million visitors, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt, visited the premier train with its V&T rolling stock. This was more than ever rode the old railroad to Virginia City.

With the success of Union Pacific and subsequent Hollywood westerns, other studios sent representatives to Carson City shopping for rolling stock. Hollywood’s growing fleet of Nevada cars and locomotives played both feature and supporting roles in scores of films produced over the following three decades. Most of these movies were shot in southern California, but the Inyo went all the way to Georgia in 1955 to act in Walt Disney’s The Great Locomotive Chase.

In 1969, when it came to celebrating the centennial of the completion of the Pacific railroad, the Union Pacific Railroad borrowed the Inyo and Dayton from Paramount Pictures to again play the parts of the Jupiter and the 119. The two locomotives were placed on flatcars and showcased on a two-month tour of the Union Pacific system. Subsequently, for almost a decade they were exhibited at the Golden Spike National Historic Site at Promontory Summit, Utah, again depicting the Jupiter and the 119.

Many Nevadans despaired as the old railroad equipment was sold out of state. However, when World War II demanded scrap iron, and when the Virginia & Truckee railroad property was sold to the scrapper in 1950, those old locomotives and cars were safe. Quite inadvertently, in their effort to acquire authentic props for the movies, the Hollywood studios had saved nearly all that remains of the old Comstock railroad’s rolling stock.

The State of Nevada bought V&T Locomotive No. 25 and 15 of the cars from the Paramount collection in 1971. Locomotives Inyo and Dayton were purchased in 1974 while they were at Golden Spike National Historic Site. They were returned to Carson City in 1978. More cars were purchased from film-use in 1988. Thus, the old equipment saved from destruction by Hollywood came home to Carson City and is today the core of the Nevada State Railroad Museum’s prized collection.