Re: EMMA SWEENEY

Yes, James, the full-sized Emma Sweeny model was a labor of love on the part of writer-director Richard Sale, a rail fan and modeler who had the entire 20th Century-Fox prop department at his disposal to indulge his whim to create an exact replica – just because he could. The blueprints created by the studio draftsmen are so detailed that in places where the prototype had a mix of hex and square headed nuts in a row, that difference is indicated in the plans. Its $30,000 cost in 1949 dollars translates to about $290,000 today. That's an expensive model! (Crass commercial plug ahead...) I wrote about "A Ticket to Tomahawk" and many other Hollywood antics (such as the Rio Grande offering to let K-36 No. 483 be destroyed in a staged movie wreck in 1968) in my new book "Hollywood's Railroads, Volume Three: Narrow Gauge Country," which also has 130 photos.