Hooterville Cannonball Mug

The Hooterville Cannonball is a fictional railroad train featured in Petticoat Junction, an American situation comedy that originally aired on CBS from 1963 to 1970. The train was considered an "important character" by the show's producers, and producer Paul Henning hired railroad historian Gerald M. Best to make sure that the locomotive sounds used on the show were authentic to a train of the same type and age. The 1890s-style train with a whimsical schedule gave the otherwise fanciful show a degree of authenticity; Henning said that "the train's weekly appearances on TV might set the space age back 50 years and drive train buffs insane with delight, but without it our show would lose its character image."