The Great Locomotive Chase

The Great Locomotive Chase is a 1956 Walt Disney Productions CinemaScope adventure film based on the real Great Locomotive Chase that occurred in 1862 during the American Civil War. The film stars Fess Parker as James J. Andrews, the leader of a group of Union soldiers from various Ohio regiments who volunteered to go behind Confederate lines in civilian clothes, steal a Confederate train north of Atlanta, and drive it back to Union lines in Tennessee, tearing up railroad tracks and destroying bridges and telegraph lines along the way.

The steam engine upon whose exploits the film is based, the General, is preserved at the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History in Kennesaw, Georgia. Representing the General in the film is the William Mason locomotive, built in 1856 and preserved in operating condition at the BampO Railroad Museum in Baltimore, Maryland.The first of three locomotives used by Conductor William A. Fuller in pursuit of the General, the Yonah, was portrayed in the movie by the Lafayette, a 1927built 420 replica of an identical locomotive of the same name built in 1837. The original Yonah, however, did not have a 420 design, but actually had a 440 design that predated the newer 440 designs of the other locomotives involved in the Great Locomotive Chase. The Lafayette is still operational and can also be found at the BampO Railroad Museum. ........

Source: Wikipedia