Ward Kimball bought the Emma Nevada locomotive in 1938. He and his wife Betty restored it. Ward was one or the original “9 Old Men” which later became Disney Imagineering. He was the animator for Pinocchio and invented the Jiminy Cricket character. Ward ran a backyard railroad named the Grizzly Flats Railroad and was the first private citizen to own his own full size narrow gauge steam locomotive. He had a full size passenger coach that was pulled around his 2 acres simply named Coach #5. In 1992 the Grizzly Flats Railroad was donated to the Orange Empire Railway Museum in Parris. I went there for Father’s Day one year to take pictures of the coach for a modeler who will make the decals for a G scale passenger car I sent him. The museum also protects Ward's other locomotive named after his daughter, Chloe. Orange Empire Railway Museum
Ward invited Walt Disney to his home one day and let him operate the Emma Nevada. That got Walt hooked and he later built his own backyard 1/8 scale live steam locomotive (built at the Disney Studios machine shop) and named his operation the Carolwood Pacific Railroad. He had a barn which housed the track controls and served as a workshop. He built the caboose entirely by himself. The barn has been preserved and is in Griffith Park located next to the Combine car. It is believed that Walt conceived the Disneyland dream in this barn, “to be like no other place on earth. And it will be surrounded by a train”! So that’s the real story behind Disneyland. It wasn’t started by a mouse… it was a TRAIN.
No comments:
Post a Comment