Railtown Eighteen Ninety-Seven

The roundhouse at Jamestown has been standing since eighteen ninety-seven and has been, for much of the century since, a working film location. The Sierra Railway was built to haul ore and timber out of the Sierra foothills, and its Victorian-era roundhouse and rail yard turned out to be, for Hollywood, an essentially irreplaceable resource: a working steam railroad with intact period infrastructure that could actually move.

The filming history starts with 'High Noon' in nineteen fifty-two, when Gary Cooper's final showdown was partially shot on these tracks. 'Petticoat Junction,' the CBS television series, used the Jamestown rail yard throughout most of its run from nineteen sixty-three to nineteen seventy. 'Back to the Future Part III,' in nineteen ninety, used the Sierra locomotive in the film's climactic train sequence, the one that drives the DeLorean to eighty-eight miles an hour.

The reason these productions came here, and the reason they keep coming, is scarcity. An intact Victorian-era rail yard with operational steam locomotives that can actually run on camera is extraordinarily rare. Most heritage railroads in the country operate for tourism only; their locomotives run slowly on short demonstration loops. The Sierra Railway roundhouse has maintained its equipment as working machinery, not just display pieces. That distinction matters when a production designer needs a train that does things on screen rather than just sitting there looking old.

The roundhouse is open to the public and still operates excursion trains. The original machinery is the reason the place has been in continuous operation, on screen and off, for over a century.