Railtown 1897 - Historic Sierra Railroad Shops

Railtown 1897 State Historic Park preserves the historic core of the original Sierra Railway of California (later reincorporated as the Sierra Railroad) at Jamestown, where the locomotive and rolling stock maintenance facilities remain remarkably intact and still function much as they have for more than a century; the shops are listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Sierra Railway Shops Historic District. The railway once served the West Side Lumber Company mill at Tuolumne and the Standard (later Pickering) Lumber Company. Its second life as "The Movie Railroad" began in 1929, when The Virginian was filmed with Sierra No. 3 — more than 200 movies, TV shows, and commercials have since featured Railtown and its trains, from Go West, High Noon, the 1957 3:10 to Yuma, and Back to the Future Part III to Petticoat Junction, whose Hooterville Cannonball was Sierra No. 3 and coach No. 5. The California State Railroad Museum assumed responsibility for the park on July 1, 1992, and although Railtown landed on state park closure lists in 2008 and again in 2011, local and enthusiast support kept it open and secured funding for major repairs to Sierra No. 28.