Thursday, March 25, 2010

Knott's Berry Farm gets a Cable Car - February 25, 1956

We’ll be focusing a little more on Knott’s Berry Farm in the next few weeks in preparation for Chris Merritt’s new “Knott’s Preserved” event on April 18th (link).

This “Telephoto” from United Press Associates is dated February 26, 1956. It’s a little pixilated, which is something you don’t usually see on 1950’s photos. The “Telephoto” process was like a fax machine for pictures, I bet the original of this is much nicer. It looks like it was a pretty involved process to bring the cable cars to the farm.






The cable cars shall not die”. They will serve the tourists at Knott’s Berry Farm's new parking lot. The photo description pasted on the back is actually the bottom portion of the Telephoto.






I’ve posted these before but they go with the photo so here they are again. This ticket appears to be one of the first tickets for the Cable Cars.








This trio of Cable Car tickets is fun, too bad they smell like a wet ash tray! (Never believe sellers on EBay when they state something is from a “smoke free home”)




4 comments:

Matterhorn1959 said...

Now I have to find that sign on the front of the Cable Car!

Major Pepperidge said...

VDT, I'm starting to think that you don't like cigarettes. Just my "spidey senses" tingling!

outsidetheberm said...

The man has clearly never enjoyed a good pipe...

Nice post, Tim. You can find one of the remaining cable cars from Knott's at the Orange Empire Railway Museum in Perris, CA. - it's worth a drive.

keeline said...

At the Poway-Midland Railroad we are restoring one of the former Knott's cable cars. With enough volunteers and some luck it should be ready to run in a year or so.

A lot of the wood parts are being refabricated to replace parts which rotted during long periods of neglect before we got it.

A new electrical system and motors are being used.

Obviously it helps that they are 42" gauge like our 1907 steam locomotive, 1894 LA Railways trolley, and 1950 Fairmont speeder since our half-mile loop of track is that gauge.

James Keeline
http://www.PowayMidlandRR.org