A Ticket to Tomahawk
I started down the research road, in this case tracks, as I do with every post. With this one, I didn’t get very far before the plot ran out of track. I like fiction, but even the willing suspension of disbelief needs a smidgeon of credibility.
A Ticket to Tomahawk is about a traveling salesman as the only passenger on the inaugural run of rail service to the Rocky Mountain town of Tomahawk. The run must be completed by a contractual deadline to establish the service. Owner of a competing stage line will stop at nothing to see the railroad fail. The first problem the run to Tomahawk encounters is a forty-mile section of unfinished track. Who knew? To get around the problem the locomotive star of the show, Emma Sweeny is taken off the tracks and pulled forty miles by a team of mules. When they get Emma back on the tracks, stagehands dynamite a trestle. This time Emma must be disassembled for the mules to get her parts over a mountain. Enough already.
Mules couldn’t pull Emma. She’s too heavy. She was in reality Rio Grande & Southern #20 ten-wheeler. Hollywood ‘made her up’ to look older with a smokestack, headlight, and a pretty paint job. Now what to do for the mule pulling scenes? Make a wooden replica the mules could pull, which they did. Now we’re talkin’. Did they make it to Tomahawk in time? Almost. Emma’s boiler lost pressure due to bullet holes just short of town. The traveling salesman saved the day when he convinced Tomahawk’s mayor to extend the town limit to where Emma stood.
Emma’s wooden stand-in with a new paint job would go on to star as the Hooterville Cannonball in the TV series Petticoat Junction. After her TV gig Emma was displayed in a California museum wearing her Hooterville make-up. Wooden Emma was later donated to the Durango Colorado Railroad Historical Society, where she was made over to her original Emma Sweeny costume.
The real Emma Sweeny has a story too. She was mothballed in 1951. In 2006 a restoration project was launched, putting her back ‘in service’ fourteen years later in 2020. She now resides in the Colorado Railroad Museum.
As for the film, it’s good they had Emma. Her performance gave interest to a tortured story line stretched beyond any hope of belief.
Next Week: High Lonesome
Return to Facebook to comment.
Ride easy,
Paul
A Ticket to Tomahawk is about a traveling salesman as the only passenger on the inaugural run of rail service to the Rocky Mountain town of Tomahawk. The run must be completed by a contractual deadline to establish the service. Owner of a competing stage line will stop at nothing to see the railroad fail. The first problem the run to Tomahawk encounters is a forty-mile section of unfinished track. Who knew? To get around the problem the locomotive star of the show, Emma Sweeny is taken off the tracks and pulled forty miles by a team of mules. When they get Emma back on the tracks, stagehands dynamite a trestle. This time Emma must be disassembled for the mules to get her parts over a mountain. Enough already.
Mules couldn’t pull Emma. She’s too heavy. She was in reality Rio Grande & Southern #20 ten-wheeler. Hollywood ‘made her up’ to look older with a smokestack, headlight, and a pretty paint job. Now what to do for the mule pulling scenes? Make a wooden replica the mules could pull, which they did. Now we’re talkin’. Did they make it to Tomahawk in time? Almost. Emma’s boiler lost pressure due to bullet holes just short of town. The traveling salesman saved the day when he convinced Tomahawk’s mayor to extend the town limit to where Emma stood.
Emma’s wooden stand-in with a new paint job would go on to star as the Hooterville Cannonball in the TV series Petticoat Junction. After her TV gig Emma was displayed in a California museum wearing her Hooterville make-up. Wooden Emma was later donated to the Durango Colorado Railroad Historical Society, where she was made over to her original Emma Sweeny costume.
The real Emma Sweeny has a story too. She was mothballed in 1951. In 2006 a restoration project was launched, putting her back ‘in service’ fourteen years later in 2020. She now resides in the Colorado Railroad Museum.
As for the film, it’s good they had Emma. Her performance gave interest to a tortured story line stretched beyond any hope of belief.
Next Week: High Lonesome
Return to Facebook to comment.
Ride easy,
Paul
No comments have been added yet.
