Designer Times
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After the second generation Monorail development effort in 1965 resulted in the decision to proceed with a conceptual design known as "the purple X", I began a steady design program which was to last for (6) years. This program would provide Disneyland with the new train it badly needed, and launch Walt Disney World with a larger Monorail Train by 1971.
While the new Monorail designs would be the main event, we would also design a number of new attractions right along with the Monorails. Walt always expected us to work on many things at once. It was normal for me to be designing (4) new attractions at once......never actually complete one deal, stop, then start the next. Everything was a blend of phases. I might be at Disneyland test driving the latest production vehicle just before it goes into service. A second project would be in full production down in the shops as I'm upstairs supervising our drafters on the third engineering job. But my mind would be focused on the upcoming fourth design where I'm sketching new concepts at a mad pace.
The MkIII Monorail design program would be done using a clever business approach. Rather than have our Machine Shop drafters produce manufacturing drawings based on my design layouts, then have Machine Shop manager Roger Broggie negotiate vendor contracts, followed by Walt Disney Studio Purchasing Department administration, we set up a Project Office. Starting in 1958, Dave Gengenbach had been a vendor's rep who worked closely with us when we had new projects for outside vendors to bid on. Dave represented Tubular Aircraft Company in Los Angeles who built a lot of our large mechanical Disneyland equipment over the years.
We hired Dave to manage the MkIII Monorail project. Since Retlaw, Walt's personal family company owned and operated the Disneyland Steam Trains as well as the existing Monorail, the new Monorail Project Office would be located at Retlaw, which shared offices at WED Enterprises. Dave would give my design layouts to the drafting group (just six guys), then issue requests for bids on batches of detail part drawings to a number of local vendors. He would also negotiate with equipment suppliers for all the purchased materials and train equipment. He would act as a single point of bid price decision, purchase order administration, quality control inspection, and project scheduling......just one guy!
Retlaw placed their non-interfering trust in Dave, all the venders knew his industry reputation as a square shooter who knew every detail of the specialty manufacturing business. He only needed minimum typing assistance, so no large staff was needed. I could trust him to coordinate all the detail design trivia that I was going to dump into his lap. I made endless piles of design layouts for him, which he always referred to as "Gurr's dead sea scrolls".
Our Monorail project intent was to select the purchased transportation industry equipment, obtain manufacturer's technical specifications, modify to fit, and design every detail from scratch ourselves. We'd then receive all the specialty manufacturing components from the vendors, using our drawings, then assemble the complete Monorail cars in our new MAPO factory next to WED in Glendale. In effect, Retlaw-WED-Mapo was to be a full blown Monorail Manufacturing Company. And the Retlaw Monorail operating team down at Disneyland would be our train final assembly gang as well as do all the test driving......which required over 12,000 miles of (24) hour test days. Since I was the designer, Retlaw figured I should drive the graveyard shift several times a week.
Also by 1965, There were lots of new manufacturing methodologies and materials to choose from. I had decided to use an XYZ dimensional coordinate system for designing, and could now use a fancy desktop calculator that would spit out paper tapes with all my calcs on weights and trigonomic dimensions. I could sketchie-doodle freehand with my left hand and enter the dimensions into the calculator with my right hand. This trick saved me a ton of drafting machine paper layout time.
Up to that time I had always taped a big piece of drafting paper on my table, drew layouts in a reduced scale, then measured the lines. No XYZ accurate space location positions, just dimensions drawn willy-nilly from part to part. Of course, one dry Santa Ana wind would shrink the paper and my dimensions didn't always fit up afterwards. A rainy week gave another set of dimensions. But with my new XYZ-trig-calc hand sketch deal I could draw details full size on smaller sheets of paper. Example; say you got a Monorail car 24 feet long but there are detail joints maybe 8 feet apart. Forget the 8 feet......just draw the details full size and write in the calculated XYZ location. I could layout a number of three-view details on one sheet ignoring the space in between. The drafters would create the whole car on their drawings. I designed everything that way from then on. Oh gosh.....how I would have loved a CAD system then, that stuff was (20) years into the future.
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