Designer Times
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34. Walt Disney Tram Tractor
As you leave your car in the parking areas today at both Walt Disney World and Disneyland, your first Disney ride is on the guest tram, pulled by a goofy looking tractor. Tiny front wheels, big back wheels, the driver seated in the center nose......what is this animal......where did it come from? Well, this critter has an interesting genesis going way back to 1969.
When Disneyland opened in 1955, guests were picked up in the parking lot and transported to the main entrance by trams pulled by a small custom built Yale tractor. (see Designer Times No. 8 for December 13, 2000). Disneyland later used much larger Clark tractors to pull their trams. When WDW planned to open in 1971, the new park would need a large tractor to pull the new WDW Tram Cars designed by Imagineer George McGinnis that were to be built by Arrow Development. Guests would be transported to the main ticket center. After purchasing their tickets, guests would then be transported by Monorail to the Magic Kingdom.
But the ticket center and the Magic Kingdom were separated by a lake which had a canal connection to another lake with a road tunneled under the canal. This road was one lane in each direction and had a steep 5% upgrade from under the canal. It was intended to be for local hotel and service use only.
Two large ferry boats were planned to also carry guests from the ticket center, across the lake, to the Magic Kingdom in addition to the Monorail service. But it became obvious that the parking lot tram would have to use this road in the early years to carry some of the guest traffic until the large ferry boats would be available. Also, if the Monorails were to get shut down during a big thunderstorm, then all of the guests would have to pass under the canal in one lane only.
If the roadway that the trams were to be driven on had been level ground, we could have bought a typical industrial tractor. But the tractor would have to pull a 5% upgrade on wet pavement under the canal. An additional requirement was that many WDW vehicles were going to be fueled by CNG, or compressed natural gas, including the tram tractors. Since the trams would be in service about (17) hours per day without refueling, the fuel capacity would be quite large......and CNG is usually carried at high pressure in very heavy and expensive tanks. So there seemed to be no such stock tractor available for WDW to buy for this special requirement. Thus we were going to have to build our own new WDW Tram Tractors.
In 1969 as the MAPO engineers began the design of a number of CNG systems to create an environmentally clean operation of several systems, it was discovered just how expensive large CNG tanks could be. The purchasing department searched for a source of used tanks. We would need tanks that were identical and in sufficient number to build maybe (20) tractors. Data on these tanks were given to me as I was searching for the right size engine, transmission, drive train, drive axle, tire sizes and such. The incoming data on the used tanks was changed every week or so until finally the company made a compromise choice of enough identical tanks at an affordable price.
Whoa.....these tanks were BIG. About (20) inch diameter and maybe (10) feet long. I would need to put two of these in the tractor, but where? I also need to place most of the total tractor weight over the driving wheels to generate the required tractive effort to pull an overloaded tram train up a wet 5% grade. So I literally had to design the rest of the tractor around the CNG tanks and the big drive axle.......Oh, and find a place for the engine and the driver.
Well, it didn't take long for the accounting department to have a heart attack over the cost for Disney to build it's own custom tractors. Purchasing then issued a bidders specification to a number of tractor companies. The winning (low) bid was from United Tractor in Chesterton Indiana. Disneyland Operations guru, Pete Crimmings, and I met with the folks in Chesterton on December 7, 1970 to determine if United could be a qualified supplier.
This is where it got funny. Seems the engineer who answered Disney's specs for a proper sized tractor was also the President.....a Mr. Carlton, a real nice guy. United had just been purchased by a corporate conglomerate of which Carlton was an officer. Their factory was fine, the tractor was (in my opinion) hopelessly small for the task, but it did meet the Disney Purchasing specs. I returned to California and was doomed to give a good report on United. Otherwise it was a case of "Gurr's sour grapes" over canceling my design.
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Posted: 3/21/10