On this day in 1961, William Mason starred in Andrews’ Raiders, part one- Secret Mission, on Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. William Mason, in this movie, is a railroad locomotive, playing the role of The General, an actual Civil War steam engine. Sharing the screen with the William Mason was Disney Legend Fess Parker as Civil War Union leader James J. Andrews, and Jeffrey Hunter as Confederate train conductor William A. Fuller. Andrews’ Raiders is in actuality the 1956 film, The Great Locomotive Chase, divided into two episodes for television. Based on actual historical events, the film tells of the time on April 22, 1862 when a party of 22 Union spies stole a train from 4,000 Confederate troops near Atlanta, Georgia, and began a race that might have brought an early end to the Civil War, had it succeeded. Walt Disney was particularly excited about this film, partly because he had a passion for trains and managed to secure aid from the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad Museum to obtain the William Mason for the film. Today, the William Mason and The General are doing well, not in a Hollywood home for the aging, but both locomotives can be seen by the public in museums. The General, is at the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History in Kennesaw, Georgia, and the William Mason is back home at the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore, Maryland.
