Ghost Town & Calico Railway

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Ghost Town & Calico Railroad is a tourist railroad within Knott's Berry Farm, a theme park in Buena Park, California. Unlike many other theme park railroads, the locomotives and most of the other equipment of the Ghost Town & Calico has been restored to its original paint schemes and appearance on Colorado's Rio Grande Southern and Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroads.

Walter Knott brought the equipment to Buena Park in 1952 and completed it the following year. The roster includes two Class C-19 Consolidation (2-8-0) locomotives, both originally constructed for the Denver & Rio Grande in 1881. When retired from service in Colorado, they were D&RGW #340 and RGS #41. Knott also purchased one of the famed "Galloping Goose" railtrucks used on the narrow-gauge lines of Colorado in the 1920s and 1930s for passengers and mail when patronage did not justify an entire train. The Goose continues to work at the GT&C on quieter days during the off-season.

Also rostered several coaches (mostly closed-vestibule), the parlor cars "Chama" and "Durango", a bobber caboose, and the business car B-20 "Edna", used by the President of the Rio Grande Southern.

A ride on the GT&C features a trip around Ghost Town, punctuated by a holdup by masked robbers, who have been known to announce their intentions by shouting "This is a tax audit!" or similar tongue-in-cheek comments.