The Ghost Town & Calico Railroad is a heritage 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 have been restored to original paint schemes and appearance on Colorado's Rio Grande Southern Railroad and Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad. Also unlike most theme park railroads, it travels in a circle and riders get off at the same place they got on.
Walter Knott began acquiring the equipment in 1951 with service starting that November.[1] The railroad's opening ceremony commenced on January 12, 1952.[2] 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 Rio Grande Southern "Galloping Goose" rail buses used on the line when patronage did not justify an entire train. These unique rail vehicles kept the railroad viable from the 1930s until the line was scrapped in 1953. The Goose #3 soldiers on at the GT&C on quieter days during the off-season.
In late 1973, the park received ex-D&RGW K-27 #464, a Mikado (2-8-2) locomotive. However, due to clearance issues, Knotts later donated the locomotive to the current owner and place of operation, the Huckleberry Railroad in Flint, Michigan.[3]
Also rostered are several closed-vestibule coaches, the parlor cars "Chama" and "Durango", a short (formerly a "bobber") caboose, several freight cars, and the business car B-20 "Edna" (formerly "San Juan",) used by Otto Mears, president of the Rio Grande Southern.
A ride on the GT&C features a trip around Ghost Town and Boardwalk areas of Knotts, 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.