Fillmore and Western Railway | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Locale | Ventura County, California, USA | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Coordinates | 34°23′57″N118°54′39″W / 34.399031°N 118.910716°W | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Commercial operations | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Built by | Southern Pacific Railroad | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Original gauge | 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Preserved operations | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Owned by | Track owned by the Ventura County Transportation Commission Rolling stock owned by Fillmore and Western Railway | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Operated by | Fillmore and Western Railway | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Reporting mark | FWRY | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Preserved gauge | 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Commercial history | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Opened | 1887 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1995 | Sold to VCTC | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Preservation history | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1991 | Short Line Enterprises begins using line | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
2021 | Final scheduled excursion | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Headquarters | Fillmore | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Website | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
fwry | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Fillmore and Western Railway( reporting mark FWRY) was a heritage railway which operated on track owned by the Ventura County Transportation Commission. [1] Visitors to Fillmore would see filming activity as well as sets and support equipment at the company's rail yard and along the tracks between Santa Paula and Piru. They stopped operating on the line in 2021.
The track is a standard gauge railroad constructed in 1887 by Southern Pacific Railroad through the Santa Clara River Valley in Ventura County, California. This line was originally part of the Southern Pacific's main line between San Francisco and Los Angeles before the shorter Montalvo Cutoff was built through the Santa Susana Mountains in 1904. State Route 126 follows roughly the same route from Ventura to Santa Clarita. The track was used extensively by Southern Pacific as late as the 1950s to haul citrus from packing houses at the communities along the Santa Clara River. In 1995, the branch line that connects at its west end to the Union Pacific at Montalvo in Ventura was purchased from Southern Pacific by the Ventura County Transportation Commission. [2] The eastern end of the line terminates in Piru as storm damage in 1979 severed the eastern end of the line to Saugus in Los Angeles County.
Short Line Enterprises [3] was a company that provided railcars for use in movie productions. [4] [5] [6] [7] They came to Fillmore in 1991 to use the rail line and eventually added tourist and dinner trains. [8]
The railroad operated a year-round tourist train and offers numerous special events, including the Railroad Days Festival, the Pumpkinliner, Christmas Tree Trains, [9] [10] [11] the North Pole Express, and the Day Out with Thomas. The normal schedule involved weekend excursions, dinner trains, murder mystery trains, barbecue trains, and shopping excursions to nearby Santa Paula. [12] [13] [14] [15]
The F&W was used in more than 400 movies, TV and commercial shots. Movies shot on the railroad include Throw Momma from the Train , [3] Three Amigos , [3] Seabiscuit , Get Smart , Rails & Ties and Race to Witch Mountain . [16] [17] Television series CSI , NCIS: Los Angeles and Criminal Minds have used the railroad for location shooting. [18]
The rail yard is located adjacent to the restored city hall in downtown Fillmore and is part of the revitalized section of the city rebuilt after the extensive damage caused by the 1994 Northridge earthquake that brought down the facades of many nearby businesses. A vintage 1906 80-ton turntable bridge originally installed in Capreol, Ontario, was purchased from the Canadian National Railway by the Santa Clara River Valley Railroad Historical Society (SCRVRHS) and was installed in a newly constructed pit on February 7, 2007. The turntable allows not only turning of locomotives and cars but also access to planned facilities on tracks in the narrow yard area. This area is planned to be the center of a proposed railway heritage park complex that will also feature a roundhouse and a Railroad Interpretive Center Museum.
Ventura County Transportation Commission reached a settlement with the Fillmore and Western for trains to operate until 2021. [19] [2] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [ excessive citations ] Fillmore and Western's lease agreement expired after June 30, 2021. [38] The final scheduled excursion trip was on June 26. [39]
The Sierra Northern Railway became the contract operator of the line in December after approval by the Ventura County Transportation Commission. [40]
The majority of F&W rolling stock was acquired from four major studios: 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros, and MGM. The rolling stock and right-of-way were frequently used for the filming of television series, motion pictures and commercials and as a locale for private and commercial still photography.
The roster of the F&W includes two GP35s, two F7s from General Motors Electro-Motive Division and an S6 and RS32 from Alco. The railroad also owns numerous coaches, freight cars, cabooses and excursion cars. The F&W roster also includes an Ex-Duluth and Northeastern Baldwin #14 2-8-0 Consolidation steam locomotive. In 2014, a 0-4-0 T Porter tank engine, the Sespe, [41] was sold to the city of Jacksonville, Oregon.
The railroad also owned the two full-size steam locomotive props that were built for The Lone Ranger (2013). [42] They are not working steam locomotives (and never were), being propelled instead by diesel engines located in their tenders. [43] The larger of the two (named "Constitution" in the film) has been used in several other productions, including Westworld and The Good Place .
The majority of the locomotives, rolling stock and other assets were acquired by Sierra Northern after the lease of the rail line ended. [44] Three pieces of equipment, including the S6, a passenger car, and the body of a Pacific Fruit Express reefer, were sold to Virginia and Truckee Railroad in Virginia City, Nevada in February 2022. [45] GP35 #3501 was sold to SMV and the "Jupiter" prop and one of the prop coaches from The Lone Ranger, as well as the GP35 prop from Inception and the prop cab from Unstoppable were sold to Volo Auto Museum.
Fillmore is a small city in Ventura County, California, United States, in the Santa Clara River Valley. In an agricultural area with rich, fertile soil, Fillmore has a historic downtown that was established when the Southern Pacific built the railroad through the valley in 1887. The rail line also provided a name for the town: J. A. Fillmore was a general superintendent for the company's Pacific system. The population was 16,419 at the 2020 census, up 9.4% from 15,002 during the 2010 census.
The Union Pacific Railroad is a Class I freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over 32,200 miles (51,800 km) routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Pacific is the second largest railroad in the United States after BNSF, with which it shares a duopoly on transcontinental freight rail lines in the Western, Midwestern and West South Central United States.
BNSF Railway is the largest freight railroad in the United States. One of six North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 35,000 employees, 32,500 miles (52,300 km) of track in 28 states, and nearly 8,000 locomotives. It has three transcontinental routes that provide rail connections between the western and eastern United States. BNSF trains traveled over 169 million miles in 2010, more than any other North American railroad.
CSX Transportation, known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Class I freight railroad company operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The railroad operates on approximately 21,000 route miles (34,000 km) of track. The company operates as the leading subsidiary of CSX Corporation, a Fortune 500 company headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida.
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CalTrain was a short-lived commuter rail system in the Los Angeles area which operated between 1982–1983. It connected downtown Los Angeles's Union Station with Oxnard in Ventura County, using the tracks of the Southern Pacific Railroad. It was the first local rail service in Los Angeles since 1961 and was a forerunner of the modern Metrolink Ventura County Line. Service ended in the face of high costs, lower-than-expected ridership, a changing political climate, and staunch opposition from the Southern Pacific.
Metrolink is a commuter rail system in Southern California, serving Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Ventura counties, as well as to Oceanside in San Diego County. The system consists of eight lines and 67 stations operating on 547 miles (880 km) of track. Arrow is operated under a contract with the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority (SBCTA).
The Metrolink Ventura County Line is a commuter rail line serving Ventura County and the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County and the City of Los Angeles, in the Southern California system. The line is the successor of the short lived CalTrain commuter rail line.
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The Ventura County Railroad is a class III railroad subsidiary of Genesee & Wyoming, connecting the Union Pacific Railroad in Oxnard to South Oxnard and Port Hueneme. It began operations in 1998 under RailAmerica, leasing its lines from the Ventura County Railway, owner of lines first opened in about 1905 that have remained independent of larger carriers. The railroad serves industrial areas including the Port of Hueneme and Naval Facilities Expeditionary Logistics Center at Naval Base Ventura County.
The Bay Coast Railroad operated the former Eastern Shore Railroad line between Pocomoke City, Maryland, and Norfolk, Virginia. The railroad interchanged with the Delmarva Central Railroad in Pocomoke City and Norfolk Southern in Norfolk; the interchange in Pocomoke City had been with Norfolk Southern prior to December 2016, when the Delmarva Central Railroad leased 162 miles (261 km) of Norfolk Southern track on the Delmarva peninsula.
The Peninsula Commute, also known as the Southern Pacific Peninsula or just Peninsula, was the common name for commuter rail service between San Jose, California and San Francisco, California on the San Francisco Peninsula. This service ran as a private, for-profit enterprise beginning in 1863. Due to operating losses, the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP) petitioned to discontinue the service in 1977. Subsidies were provided through the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) in 1980 to continue service, and it was renamed Caltrain.
OmniTRAX, Inc. is a transportation and transportation infrastructure holding company based in Denver, Colorado, in the United States. It primarily owns or operates railroads, with a network of 25 regional and shortline railroads in 12 U.S. states and three Canadian provinces. It is one of the largest privately owned railroad companies in the United States. The firm also invests in, develops, and operates ports, multimodal transportation terminals, and industrial parks.
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The Ventura County Transportation Commission (VCTC) is the public sector transportation planning body for Ventura County, California. The VCTC oversees highway, bus, aviation, rail and bicycle activity and controls the use of government funds for transportation projects. The commission was created by state legislation in 1988 and began operation in 1989, when it assumed the transportation responsibilities of the Ventura County Association of Governments.
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The Santa Paula Branch Line is a railway corridor in Ventura County, California. It connects Saugus and Santa Paula through the Santa Clara River Valley, though the route east of Piru is out of service. It opened for traffic by the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1887. Since 1995 the line has been owned by the Ventura County Transportation Commission.