Wagon Train is an American westerntelevision series that was produced by Revue Studios. The series was inspired by the 1950 John Ford film Wagon Master. It ran for eight seasons with the first episode airing in the United States on and the final episode on. Its first five seasons were broadcast on the NBC network and the remaining three on ABC. Originally an hour-long program filmed in black-and-white, Wagon Train expanded to 90-minute color episodes in its seventh season but returned to hour-long black-and-white for its eighth year. During its run 284 episodes were broadcast, of which 252 were an hour in length and 32 were 90 minutes. Wagon Train was an immensely popular program during its original run. In the autumn of 1959, two years after its inception, it ranked as one of seven Westerns in the Nielsentop ten in the United States. In the 1961–62 season it surpassed Gunsmoke in popularity and ranked as the most popular program on American television. Wagon Train revolved around the characters traveling to California by a wagon train caravan from St. Joseph, Missouri. In its first three seasons and part of the fourth, the regular cast consisted of Ward Bond as Major Seth Adams, the trailmaster, Robert Horton as Flint McCullough, the scout, Terry Wilson as Bill Hawks, the ramrod, and Frank McGrath as Charlie Wooster, the cook. During the fourth season Scott Miller was introduced as an assistant scout Duke Shannon. Ward Bond died of a heart attack on November 5, 1960. The last five episodes in which he appeared were broadcast posthumously, after which John McIntire was introduced as Bond's replacement, scoutmaster Christopher Hale. At the end of the fifth season Robert Horton left the series to pursue a career in musical theatre. He was replaced in the seventh season by Robert Fuller as the new scout, Cooper Smith. The final episode of the sixth season introduced Michael Burns as teenager Barnaby West, who became a recurring character in the seventh season. Scott Miller left the series after the seventh season, leaving McIntire, Fuller, Wilson, McGrath, and Burns to carrythe show through its final year.
Season overview
Episodes
Titles, credits, and airdates are taken from Wagon Train — The Television Series by James Rosin
