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| Walt Disney with the locomotive created for Disneyland. |
Walt Disney loved trains, and because of that, the world is
a better – and happier -- place.
Walt was fond of saying that his empire “started with a
mouse.” And indeed, his creation of Mickey Mouse did make him a fortune. But the idea for Mickey Mouse came to him
while riding a train.
It’s quite possible that if Walt was not such a railroad
buff, Disneyland and none of the other 11 Disney theme parks would exist. Certainly,
if not for Walt, four old beaten-up steam locomotives that did decades of work
hauling hemp and sugar cane on the Ferrocarriles Unidos de Yucatan (United
Railways of the Yucatan) would have long ago been turned into scrap metal in
Merida.
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| The Disney empire has 11 theme parks. |
Instead, these four ancient engines from Mexico have been
transformed into the most popular steam trains in the world, bringing delight
to kids and pulling 3.7 million passengers a year.
Yes, it all started with a mouse. But it also might never have happened but for
Walt Disney’s love of trains.
“In one way or another, I have always
loved trains.” Walt Disney
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| The museum is in America's newest national park, the Presidio |
The best place to follow this remarkable story, is to start
at the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco. Located on the Presidio, a former army base
that’s been turned into one of America’s newest national parks, the huge 40,000
sq. ft. museum tells the life story of Walt Disney, letting you get to see –
and hear -- the man behind the magic.
Much of the story is narrated by Walt himself on 200 video screens.
There are interactive galleries, artifacts, photos, early drawings, historic
cartoons, and a 14-foot model of Disneyland.
From gallery to gallery, the
story unfolds. Walt was born in 1901 and had an idyllic childhood on a farm in
Marceline, Missouri. Railroads at this
time were much more than transportation, especially to Walt. His father was a railroad mechanic and his
Uncle Mike Martin was a steam locomotive engineer. Walt’s first job was selling newspapers,
candy and fruit on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.
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| Walt Disney (right) with his first locomotive, the Lilly Belle |
His other great love as a youth was drawing cartoons. At 16 he faked his age so he could become an
ambulance driver in France during World War I, where he spent his down time
drawing cartoons.
Many of his drawings
from that period are on display in the museum.
Back from the War, with just $40 in his pocket, Walt took a
train to California and with his brother Roy as a partner, set out to change
the world of animation. There were ups
and downs. In 1928, he lost his first
success, Oswald the Rabbit, to a bad business deal in New York. Bankrupt, he was returning to California by
train with his wife Lillian when he thought up a new cartoon – Mortimer
Mouse. His wife thought the name was too
formal and changed it to Mickey.
For the next 20 years, Walt would provide the
voice for Mickey Mouse, while Disney Studios released a steady stream of
ground-breaking animated movies, from the first full-length feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Fantasia, now regarded as a masterpiece.
Toy Trains Generate an Idea
Walt had always had a Lionel toy train set in his office,
but in the late 1940s he discovered that two of his animators had bigger
ambitions -- they had backyard railroads.
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| Walt riding behind the Lilly Belle. |
Ward Kimball, who drew Jiminy Cricket, had a full-scale train in his
backyard, while Ollie Johnson, famous for creating Pinocchio and Bambi, had
a large-scale model railroad that you could actually ride on.
Walt went to the studio machine shop and hired Roger E.
Broggie to build him a miniature railroad.
It was the beginning of a wonderful friendship. Ultimately, Walt’s backyard railroad, called
the Carolwood Pacific after his street address,
had a half-mile of track, switches and a long trestle. His wife had a problem with the train going
through her flower garden, so he buried a 70-foot-long tunnel under the plants. He also named the engine after her – the
“Lilly Belle.”
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| The Lilly Belle today in the Walt Disney Museum |
The seven-foot-long locomotive and tender and many of the
cars are now on display in the museum.
Walt could sit on the tender and drive the locomotive around his yard
pulling 11 people, who would sit on top of the miniature railcars. His daughter’s friends, neighbors – and even
strangers – stopped by for a ride.
Walt was getting an idea.
Before his train, he had taken his young daughters to
amusement parks. He said, “Saturday was always daddy’s day. So I’d take them to
the merry-go-round and different places and as I’d sit while they rode the
merry-go-round. I felt that there should be something built where parents and
children could have fun together.”
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| A 14-foot early model of Disneyland |
He wrote his ideas for a new type of theme park, originally
called Mickey Mouse Park, to a friend, saying, “I just want it to look like
nothing else in the world…and it should be surrounded by a train.”
His brother Roy and his wife thought he was crazy. At this time, amusement parks were trashy
places with a bad carnival atmosphere.
But Walt persisted with his dream, and on July 17, 1955 Disneyland
opened in Anaheim, California.
It was
like nothing else in the world. And it
was circled by a train.
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| Walt wanted to do his next park bigger and better in Orlando |
The park was a phenomenal success. But Walt had bigger dreams and set his eye on
Florida, where he wanted to build another theme park. “I am doing this because I want to do it
better,” he said. The locomotives at
Disneyland had been built from scratch, but for the new park, he wanted real
locomotives, and he sent Roger Broggie around the
Roger did. In a
railroad graveyard in Merida, Mexico, he found four old rusted black
locomotives that had hauled sugar cane, sitting forlorn and abandoned, ready
for the scrap heap. Roger bought them
for $750, shipped
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| The world mourned Walt's passing |
Sadly, Walt never got to see them. He died unexpectedly from lung cancer
complications on Dec. 15, 1966. But his
brother Roy took up the mission, and on October 1, 1971 opened the Magic
Kingdom in Orlando with all four locomotives circling the new park.
Backstage Railroad Tour
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| Engineer Joe takes the tour back to the roundhouse. |
Today, some 3.7 million people ride the Walt Disney World
Railroad every year, making it the largest railroad in Florida carrying more
passengers than AMTRAK. You can take the
20 minute, 1.5 mile ride around the park, or if you want an up close and
personal look at the trains, you can take a $54 backstage Train Tour. The tour is limited to 20 people and meets
outside the gates of the Magic Kingdom at a shocking 7:30 a.m.
The early departure is soon forgotten when a real locomotive
engineer, Joe, shows up in overalls, striped engineer cap and red bandana,
ready to take us on our own personal train ride. Each
locomotive circles the Magic Kingdom 70 times a day, but on our backstage tour,
our personal train stops after a quarter mile and blows three short
whistles. We will learn that this is the
signal for going in reverse. Each train
has 16 different whistle patterns and they all mean different things. Two short whistles means moving forward, one
long whistle and one short (followed by a clanging bell) means coming into a
station.
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| A personal train stops at the station for the 20 person tour. |
On our tour, the locomotive backs over a switch and pushes
its five cars back to the roundhouse, located outside the park, where we will
get to see all of the engines getting ready for a day’s work.
It takes 45 minutes to fire up each locomotive and get the
water to 425 degrees to create the steam that propels it. The locomotives are stored in the bottom
floor of the massive “roundhouse” (which is actually rectangular because the
upper floor is where Disney World stores all their monorails at night). Crews work all night long preparing the
engines, polishing the brass, repainting some of the trim, refueling the tender
(the train uses 22 gallons of fuel an hour).
How to Run a Locomotive
Joe takes us up into the cab where we get to see how to
drive a locomotive. A giant wheel in
the cab is covered with notches. The
throttle has a handle that fits in the notches and can be moved forward or
backward a notch at a time.
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| "Bring it up a notch" to make it go faster. |
Joe tells us some of the other every day expressions that
came from railroading. “Blowing your stack” comes from letting off
steam pressure through the smokestack, whereas “Spinning your wheels” is what
happens if a locomotive tries to start too quickly and the wheels spin on the
tracks without getting traction. We
wonder if Joe is just “yanking our chain,” but turns out, that’s another
railroading expression. So is “Wrong
Side of the Tracks,” which was the side where wind normally blew smoke and ash,
so it was where the poor people lived.
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| Everyone gets to be an Engineer |
The park opens at 9 a.m., so it’s soon time for the
locomotives to get to work and we have a rare opportunity to see the trains the
Walter E. Disney and the Roger E. Broggie side by side. These two locomotives were built side by side
in 1925 by Baldwin Locomotive works for Ferrocarriles Unidos de Yucatan. They worked side by side in Mexico for 40 years,
and today they still run on the same tracks together.
No other two locomotives in history have ever
done that.
It’s a fitting tribute to
Walt and his friend Roger, who did so much to keep the adventure
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| These two locomotives have shared many adventures. |
Millions upon millions of people around the world have been able to hear a real steam whistle, see and feel the cloud of steam as an engine pulls into a station, listen to the clanging bell and enjoy the thrill of riding behind a real locomotive as it chugs down the tracks.
“I just want it to look like nothing else in the world,”
Walt said about his theme park. And he
built it. Circled by a train.
If you go: Walt Disney Family Museum, www.waltdisney.org/, Walt Disney World, www.disneyworld.disney.go.com/
