Railtown 1897 State Historic Park, Railway museum and California state historic park in Jamestown, United States.
Railtown 1897 is a railway museum and California state park in the Sierra Nevada foothills featuring a collection of historic locomotives and railway cars. The site includes a working roundhouse where visitors can see how locomotives are maintained and turned.
The Sierra Railway was founded in the late 1800s and continuously operated from this location to support mining and logging industries in the Sierra Nevada region. The roundhouse was built in 1910 and remains one of the oldest functioning structures of its kind in America.
More than 200 films and television shows such as Back to the Future Part III and High Noon filmed here, using the historic locomotives as sets. This extensive filmmaking history makes the location an important part of California's entertainment legacy.
The park is accessible daily and provides guided tours, train rides, and educational programs about railroad history. Visitors should allow time to walk around the grounds and inspect the locomotives and roundhouse at their own pace.
The 1910 roundhouse is one of the few still-operating turntable facilities of its kind in the United States and was originally designed to service and turn locomotives around. Visitors can witness the mechanical workings of this rare structure, which has remained in continuous use for over a century.
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