90 Casey Jones

First  watched :  Uncertain

This  had  been  on  before  but  I  think  it's  most  likely  I   first  saw  it  as  part  of  the  morning  schedule  in  the  summer  holidays  in  1972. Like  The  White  Horses  the  theme  song  is  easier  to  recall  than  the  series  itself. Made  in  the  late  fifties,  Casey  Jones  was  very  loosely  based  on  a  real  railroad  engineer  and  his  train , The  Cannonball  Express.  It  had  a  regular  cast  of  five  with  Alan  Hale's  Casey  assisted  by  Wallie  the  fireman  and  Redrock  the  conductor  plus  a  wife  and  Casey  Junior  ( Bobby  Clark )  who  featured  in  episodes   to a   variable  extent.

The  episodes - thirty-two  were  made  in  total - were  basically  mini-Westerns  with  familiar  tropes  , gold  shipments, escaped  prisoners , Indian  attacks  etc  but  with  a  low  death  rate  to  keep  it  child-friendly. The  resourceful  Casey  manages  to  save  the  day in  half  an  hour. It  was  quite  gritty  and  is  still  watchable  although  being  black  and  white  it  hasn't  been  shown  here since  1975.

Apart  from  Clark  all  the  cast  had  died  by  the  mid-nineties. Now  70  himself  he  still  makes  the  odd  public  appearance  although  his  screen  career  ended  in  the  early  sixties.