Designer Times
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Designer Times is a continuing column by legendary Imagineer Bob Gurr on his experiences in the early days of Disneyland to benefit the Ryman-Carroll Foundation. If you missed any previous columns, click here for the list.
13. Excursion Train
Disneyland opened in July 1955 with two authentic Steam Trains; The Passenger Train and The Freight Train. We soon learned that some folks were a bit offended when riding in the Freight Cars.........sort of like cattle going to market as they passed thru each station. The Passenger Train cars were a thing of beauty, with seats facing in the direction of travel. Since the Steam Trains passed around the outside of Disneyland, most guests were always looking to the right side to see everything in the Park.
This was easy to do in the Freight Train.......just stand and look sideways thru the Cattle Car wood board sides. The Gondola Car was the easiest to see the Park from. We redesigned the Freight Train seating in October 1956 by placing tiered long bench seats in these cars facing sideways toward the Park. The Cattle Car already had a roof, so we added a canvas canopy roof to the Gondola Cars. Now the authentic and elegant Passenger Cars didn’t provide as good a view as the now non-authentic Freight Cars.
Walt wanted to add a third train - The Excursion Train, an open Narragansett Type popular with Eastern USA trolley and railroad operators. The cross-bench seating would be very fast to load and unload, unlike the long-aisle two-door Passenger Cars. The Disneyland Railroad would now be authentic and fast boarding - just what a rapidly expanding Disneyland needed by 1958.
Roger Broggie loaned me lots of Narragansett Type car construction drawings for reference. I was to engineer an all-steel car that would look like authentic wooden construction. Roger also wanted the trucks to use modern simple steel framing to which we would mount the store-bought C. M. Lovsted wheels, axles, pedestals, and such. Wowee, I was now getting some real training in rail car engineering.
Walt’s Disneyland rail car designer, Eddie Sargeant, had drawn up parts for the Main St. Horse drawn Street Cars in August of 1954. The upright posts and seatback bracket castings were perfect for use on the Excursion Cars. By careful selection of press broken sections provided by A. J. Bayer Company, and some half oval aluminum moldings on the sheet metal, I could make metal look like wood.
Between September 1, 1957 and February 4, 1958, my two draftsmen and I made (35) car fabrication drawings. On previous projects I pretty much had to make all my own drawings, but the Disney Studio Machine Shop drafting room was getting more folks to help out as Disneyland expanded. Chuck Schrader joined us right out of the US Air Force, and Art Moseley was a fellow 1949 Art Center School student. Art and I trained to be Detroit car stylists, but here we were......working on Walt Disney’s Railroad.
To pull the new Excursion Train, Roger Broggie found that Disneyland could buy an old narrow gauge locomotive, then rebuild and re-style it into the beautiful Disneyland Locomotive No. 3. Michael Broggie’s wonderful book “ Walt Disney’s Railroad Story” tells the complete saga of the Excursion Train as well as all of Walt’s other trains.
By the spring of 1958, the Machine Shop had evolved from a small movie studio mechanical fabrication and repair shop to a booming factory. Moving into a big new building in 1956, the shop was overflowing with Disneyland projects. It must have been quite a sight for movie studio visitors to find the surrounding streets filled with Autopia cars, railroad cars and locomotives, animated animals, and all sorts of “gags” under construction.
Supporting the machine shop in building all this stuff was a number of other studio shops on the back lot......the mill for carpentry, staff shop for plaster work, plumbing, electrical, paint, welding and the like. We had many visiting suppliers who would leave us piles of parts catalogs (which is the very heart of engineering knowledge). Anytime we said “Disneyland” a vendor would jump to help us.....even to only sell a handful of small bits. We designers were living in a wonderful factory fantasyland as we helped build Walt’s real Fantasyland. Roger Broggie ran this whole shebang with a minimum of words or interference.
In 1954 the machine shop drafting team could be counted on one hand......mostly for studio camera equipment. In 1958 we had about (10) drafters who had to learn to design a wide range of custom Disneyland equipment as fast as Walt could dream them up. Amazingly, all the purchasing details were handled by Roger’s lone assistant, Helen Astimendi......no big paper mill......”give Helen the numbers” Roger would say. We drafters would run out and source most of our parts......even go pick them up first, get the price, give it to Helen, then the vendor got a check in the mail. Sort of a Reverse Polish Purchasing system. But that’s one of the reasons why Disneyland got things built so quick in those days!
oOo
Next month: More Animated Gags and Animals
Discuss It
-- Bob Gurr
Bob Gurr began working with Disney in 1954. He retired in 1981 but occassionally consults for the Company. Since Disney he's worked on the sinking ship at Las Vegas' Treasure Island, Universal Studios' King Kong, Godzilla for the film by the same name and much more. Among his proudest accomplishments he lists "making Walt tickled pink that some of the things he wanted to build actually worked. You could tell how proud he was when he would show off things to his friends and the press. Lincoln and the Monorail were two big ones for him."
Designer Times is normally posted the second Wednesday of each month.
The opinions expressed by Bob Gurr, and all of our columnists, do not necessarily represent the feelings of LaughingPlace.com or any of its employees or advertisers. All speculation and rumors about the future of Disneyland and the Walt Disney Company are just that - speculation and rumors - and should be treated as such.
-- Posted May 9, 2001
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