You stand excitedly in the long queues of the Disneyland main gates,
the chilly morning breeze brushes past you as you reach for your theme park admission.
In the distance breaks the shrill cry from a steam whistle, hearkening back to a time long
since past, like the blurry recollection of an aged memory. You may have never questioned the
history of this attraction, or how it works, but now you’re intrigued. But in order for me
to explain we must go back to the beginning, so climb aboard.
The clouds of steam encapsulate us as we travel back through boundless time…
Walt Disney was born in 1901 into a world where the only way to efficiently travel long distances
across land was by steam railroad. His uncle was an engineer on the Santa Fe Railroad, driving
steam locomotives across the Missouri prairies and farms. When Walt was 15, he got a job as a news
butch, selling newspapers from car to car aboard the Missouri Pacific Rail line. That was the first
time he developed a fascination for trains, and that interest only grew as he entered adulthood.
Disney Legend Ward Kimball recounted Walt’s first time picking up the railroad hobbyist obsession:
“The first time I realized that Walt Disney was a genuine railroad fan was during a steam-up
party at our home in 1945… …I invited Walt to be the guest engineer... …I’m sure that I
never saw him smile any wider than that evening when he pulled the throttle on the Emma Nevada
as she steamed out of the engine house with her bell ringing and whistle blowing.
By the time the party was over, Walt was hooked.”
Three years later in 1948, Walt Disney and Ward Kimball traveled by train to
the Chicago Railroad Fair and were like a couple of kids enjoying their trains.
When Walt returned to the studio, his fascination with trains had grown tenfold.
Walt continued to feed into his railroad obsession, and by the year 1950,
it culminated in his own backyard live steam railroad which he called the Carolwood Pacific.
With help from his fellow train enthusiasts, he constructed a 1/8th scale miniature engine in
the studio machine shop and called it…the Lilly Belle. The Lilly Belle is a type of
engine called a 4-4-0 which was regarded as a standard American type back in the late 1870’s.
The numbers indicate how many wheels it has, four pilot wheels which help support the front
of the engine and steer it around curves, plus four driving wheels that provide propulsion,
and zero trailing wheels behind it. The engine was inspired by the Central Pacific 173, the reason
this specific engine was selected, is actually because Walt’s team was able to find a complete
blueprint of it, from which they could scale down the measurements to construct the Lilly Belle.
On the weekends Walt gave friends and neighbors rides on his railroad, and his backyard train
became so popular he needed to add a stronger engine in order to haul more passengers,
but before he could complete it, he had new ideas brewing. He wanted to combine his love of giving
train rides, with the studio’s need to offer a Disney experience to tourists. The result was
his dream for an 11 acre Mickey Mouse park right across the street from his studio in Burbank.
It would be surrounded by a 1/8th scale railroad operating several trains on any given day.
But…as with most of Walt’s plans, they continued to get bigger.
Camera machinist -turned Imagineer- Roger Broggie, was in charge of the railroad project,
Walt asked him if the studio could construct the trains. Roger explained that they still
had all the engineering drawings for the Lilly Belle, so all they needed to do was scale it up.
After a visit to Travel Town at Griffith Park to examine some narrow-gauge steam equipment, they
took measurements back with them to the studio. Now I’m going to pause here to explain what
narrow gauge is. The typical railroads that crisscross the United States today have
rails that are spaced 4 feet 8 inches apart, we call this standard gauge.
But in the old days, if the terrain called for sharper turns that standard guage trains
couldn’t do, they would construct a narrow-gauge railroad, the most common size was 3 feet.
However, just because the tracks were closer together didn’t always mean the trains were smaller.
Roger and his team were tasked with finding out what scale the trains should be in order for them
to look proportionally correct to the narrow width of the rails. They used a massive chalkboard to
draw the back end of a standard passenger car from the late 1800’s. Roger explained, “Railroad cars
are 10 feet wide, so we drew a 10 foot car with a 6 foot 8inch door; then reduced the size until
we got down to a six-foot doorway.”
And so it was decided, the car would be seven feet wide, with a six foot door, and the overall scale
of the car ended up 5/8th of real size, which looked prototypical running on 3 foot rails.
Both of Disney’s engines 1 and 2 were structurally identical because they came from the same blueprints
however, while the C.K. Holiday engine #1 was designed to look like the Central Pacific
173, and would be a miniature replica of the old wood-burning locomotives from the 1870’s,
complete with a diamond stack fire arrestor. The E.P. Ripley engine #2,
was designed to look like the Baltimore & Ohio 774, a coal burning locomotive from the 1880’s,
decorated with a large brass cap on its exhaust stack. Fabrication of the boilers was contracted
out to Dixon Boiler Works, while the structural frame was built by Wilmington Iron.
The decorative features and some of the running gear were all machined by the Imagineers at the studio.
I’d like to take a moment to explain how a Disneyland steam locomotive works,
since it would be really helpful to understanding the rest of the video. A fuel source is burned in
the firebox, at Disneyland they used #2 diesel oil, the fire then passes through the flues,
transferring heat to the surrounding water and then it exhausts up the stack. The boiling water
builds steam pressure to 150 psi, and when the engineer pulls the throttle, that steam is sent
to the two cylinder pistons which push and pull at the driving rods, turning the wheels.
The spent steam is then exhausted up the stack. The locomotives are operated by an engineer who
is in charge of driving the train and blowing the whistle, and also by a fireman who manages
the fuel and water levels, and maintains the fire and operates the bell.
At Disneyland, they refer to the fireman as a firer since the person working the shift can be any gender.
The four driving wheels provide all of the pulling power in the form of tractive effort.
The pilot wheels in the front of the locomotive only help support the front of the boiler and
help ease it around turns. The tender which is the small car that is often seen behind a locomotive,
carries the water and fuel for the locomotive and supplies it using rubber hoses.
The tender provides no pulling power,
but its wheels are equipped with brakes so at least it helps slow the train down.
And speaking of brakes, the Disneyland railroad uses an old type of system
called direct-line braking. Basically, a steam powered compressor on the engine keeps air tanks
on the engine pressurized. All the cars on the train are hooked up to the air brake system
through a network of air hoses, and when the engineer applies air pressure to the system,
the brake cylinders on every car expand, pushing brake shoes against the wheels.
Locomotive #2 the EP Ripley would pull a set of 6 old-fashioned passenger cars,
their late 19th century design was identifiable by their distinctive clerestory roofs and ornamented
scroll work on the corner trims. The passenger train was referred to as the Retlaw 1,
Retlaw being the name “Walter” spelled backwards, but also the name of Walt Disney’s private company
which owned the Disneyland Railroad and Mark Twain Riverboat. Walt had the foresight to privately own
these attractions so that it was he who had all the control, and not the Disney company.
The passenger cars would be built 7 feet wide, 9 feet tall, and 36 feet long. The windows and
seats came from a schoolbus manufacturer, which explains their familiar look. Meanwhile the
wheel trucks and brake systems on each car were fabricated by CM Lovsted of Seattle, Washington.
The cars of the Retlaw 1 train consisted of a combination baggage and passenger car,
called a combine, and behind it were four regular passenger coaches, and at the end was
an observation car complete with an observation platform at the very rear of the train.
Each car had 2 loudspeakers and 5 flush mounted brass lamps to illuminate the interiors in the evenings.
With a total capacity of 268 passengers, the Retlaw 1 train could really cram a lot of guests
in such a tiny little space, departing from Main Street Station on a non-stop return trip.
The other train, originally called the Retlaw 2, is a freight train that was pulled by the
C.K. Holiday and was designated to depart from Frontierland Station on a non-stop journey back
to Frontierland, utilizing the passing tracks at Main Street Station, to go around the E.P. Ripley.
The train consisted of 3 cattle cars, 2 gondola cars and 1 caboose.
The experience on this train was vastly different from the passenger train
because this one was intended to give you the experience of being livestock.
It had only 1 bench per car, while the rest was standing room only.
Sliding doors would seal up the cattle cars and gondolas, keeping you locked inside the whole trip.
Guests in the gondola cars had the worst experience, because they were directly subjected to the weather.
The Freight cars measured 7 feet wide, and 25 feet long.
The caboose also featured a cupula on top where guests could sit and get an overhead view of the whole train.
While both trains were mostly all made from wood, they did use a steel underframe for strength and longevity.
Connecting each car is a set of couplers. To the un-trained eye, they may look
like modern knuckle couplers, but they are a much older version called Janney couplers, which were
designed to be compatible with the link-and-pin system that existed before the 1880’s.
Engine #1 even has an authentic push bar, which can be linked to a Janney coupler.
All the cars even came with replicas of period brake wheels
which could be turned manually to slow or stop a train.
Or immobilize it when an engine is not present.
These details may seem insignificant,
but it’s this attention to authentic detail which really adds to the Disneyland Railroad.
Admiral Joe Fowler, the man tasked with overseeing construction of Disneyland,
had his crew construct the railroad roundhouse in under a week.
Traditionally a roundhouse is…well round,
but since there were only two trains, they built a rectangular building.
It was located behind Frontierland near the Rivers of America, and was stocked with machining
equipment for maintaining the engines, but the car barn behind the roundhouse was only a metal roof
without walls, so the cars were a little exposed to the weather.
After the engines arrived, workers fitted the boilers with their insulation,
and started installing the plumbing and decorative features.
The expenses on the railroad had mounted to a grand total of $240,065!
The first trip around Disneyland happened one month before the park opened,
it was June 17th 1955 and the designers and crew of the railroad were there at 5 o’clock
in the morning to begin the 3 hour steam-up procedure…
starting up a steam engine
isn’t done with the turn of a key or the press of a button, it takes a while to get all that
iron hot and all that water boiling, and then you have to wait for the pressure to build!
On July 4th, Walt Disney hosted an Independence Day party at Disneyland for the studio workers
and their families, which included a partial ride around the park on the Disneyland Railroad.
The track loop was completed 3 days shy of Walt and Lillian Disney’s 30th wedding anniversary on July 13th 1955.
Guests coming to the event got to ride the EP Ripley all the way around the park,
as well as enjoy a twilight shakedown cruise aboard the Mark Twain.
To lend a bit of authenticity to the railroad, Walt managed to get the attraction a sponsorship
contract from the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. In fact, engines #1 and #2 were
named after former presidents of the Santa Fe Railroad.
When Disneyland’s opening day had come on July 17th,
guests lined up to ride aboard the trains. The price of a train ticket was 50 cents
for adults and 35 cents for children. The original loop around the park was a length of 6,357 feet or
1.2 miles, and with only 1 stop for each train, the whole trip could be made in about 7 minutes.
During the public opening of the park on July 18th, there was an incident that occurred at Main Street Station
While the passenger train was entering the station, the crewman switched the
track while the Grand Canyon car #106 was still rolling over it. The result was that half the car
was rolling on the passing tracks and struck the concrete edge of the entrance bridge.
Thankfully, there were no injuries or further damage. As for the crewman who caused the accident, he used the
ensuing chaos as an opportunity to slip out of sight and leave the park, never coming back.
The next year, 1956, a station was added at Fantasyland, and the trains no longer passed each other,
instead they ran single-file, stopping at all three depots.
To increase excitement on the railroad,
two tunnels were added, one after the Frontierland station near Fowler’s Harbor,
and the other just past the Mine Train ride on the approach to Fantasyland.
As ordinary as this may seem, train tunnels have always fascinated railway passengers.
Yes, the Disneyland trains were a remarkable success,
it was proof that despite some of the simple concepts that went into his park,
Walt Disney knew what the people wanted. But as the railroad's popularity continued to grow,
there came a whole new challenge:
how to keep the show fresh for returning audiences and...
how to manage the increasingly long lines at the stations
...and that is where our story will continue next time...