I don’t remember the TV series Union Pacific but I do remember Iron Horse with dale Robertson.
Don’t forget that Hooterville figured in both the Petticoat Junction and Green Acres series.
Supposedly it was inspired by Eldon, MO, where the grandparents of the wife of the series creator Paul Henning lived. Supposedly.
Most of Petticoat Junction was 30 episodes or more. Looking at my season 1-3 DVD sets for instance (The only seasons CBS has released), season 1 is 38 episodes, season 2 is 36 episodes, and season 3 is 34 episodes. The first two black & white seasons were seen in 1970 as holding no syndication value due to the lack of color and it wasn’t until they were remastered and released on DVD in the late 2000’s that they were seen again.
And I don’t know if this is true, but have seen it said that CBS only bought the final season of Petticoat Junction (Season 7) in the midst of their infamous “rural purge”, in order to have 5 seasons in color for syndication purposes.
They viewed that as the ideal size for syndication and in fact several longer running CBS controlled shows lost huge chunks of their legacy for decades in syndication since CBS didn’t want the syndication package of a show to have too many episodes.
My Three Sons for instance had 7 color seasons (After 5 b&w seasons), but CBS for decades didn’t offer the second half of season 11 and all of season 12 in order to keep down the episode count for the syndication package (Which also excluded all the b&w episodes).
And these days it’s only seasons 6-10 that are advertised as available in the CBS Syndication Bible,
Yeah, I remember that one too. Blah. I liked Dale Robertson in everything he was in, but there wasn’t a hell of a lot of “iron horse” in Iron Horse, mostly cowboys-Indians-bad guys stuff, almost no train action.
Now when I was a little boy there was a TV series called Casey Jones starring Alan Hale Jr. as Casey. Lots of train action in that one! Turned me into a steam freak for life! You can find it pretty easily with a YouTube search. Aimed at kids, don’t expect a lot of serious railroad authenticily, but like I said lots of action!
Here’s a brief look.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hps6L5vS0sc
And yes, that’s Sierra RR #3, the “Petticoat Junction” locomotive.
He presumably never made “a three hour run” in that series…
And he didn’t have to bother with all the Howell’s baggage either!
Speaking of “model”…the Mantua/Tyco HO scale “Dixie Belle” 4-6-0 engine is based on Sierra No.3 - the plastic boiler shell even has a number 3 embossed on the smokebox door. Oddly, I don’t think it was ever offered lettered for the Sierra, but I think they did do a run as the Petticoat Junction C&FW engine?? Of course No.3 has been in movies going back to the 1920’s, like “High Noon”, “Back to the Future 3”, etc, plus many TV shows.