Designer Times
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Curiosity meets request. I never gave it a thought that I wouldn't be able to figure this stuff out as I went.

The stories about the early Disneyland projects describe in detail how I learned the Mechanical Engineering trade with on-the-job training. Autopia, Main Street Vehicles, The Viewliner Train, and the Disneyland Monorail were my learning projects. Starting out at ground zero in late 1954, by October

1958 I was Styling AND Engineering America's first Monorail Train. In the time an engineering student would have earned a college degree (and spent a fortune), I had picked up a ton of knowledge while Walt paid me. Disneyland had all these new attractions in the time span it would have taken to receive a fancy shingle....pretty cool.

I'm sure there's various procedures that designers use to get started a new project. Commonly it's a series of events; request for proposal from the buyer, response from the engineers, bid and award of contract, etc. Then someone writes a detailed scope of work, the job gets man-loaded, a project engineer selects the team and so on. This is where the trained engineer develops specifications, determines physical loading criteria, identifies supply sources, then seeks approval to start the job.

Then an overall configuration is fleshed out following some logical path, and the detail engineering starts. Along the way the stress analysis guys crunch numbers to tell the team what size the material sections must be, and the drafting effort begins. The weight and cost guys either help or hinder with limitations. If the original configuration is not pragmatically inspired, the job can turn into a miserable grind of revisions with sinking morale and rising costs.

Whoa!....not in my backyard. Not being trained in "correct procedures", our new Disneyland projects followed an entirely different path. One that I fondly look back on as a fabulous blessing. Since Disneyland was all new, and Walt was collecting a wide variety of creative folks, there really wasn't a set of rules to go by. We all just "did it". Since I'd never "done it", I just started right in and we'd see what was needed as we went.

Here's how I generally worked: Walt or my boss Roger Broggie would tell me in a few words what they were looking for in say, a new vehicle. They'd tell me to go see the Art Director as to where it's going to go, what it needs to do, etc. I had a general knowledge of how things work, a basic idea of who's going to build it and when it must be finished. I would visualize the overall appearance, then do some doodles to play with the design. At the same time I would think of the functional mechanical parts we would either build or buy. I'd then make an artistic rendering to show Walt what it would look like.

Walt usually said "lets go"....not much committee stuff. Roger would tell me who I should work with in various parts of the company. This involved WED Enterprises and Disneyland Operations folks. We didn't have any project managers, coordinators, design reviews, or any formal meetings that would slow down the progress. I'd make most all the fabrication drawings myself and give them to Roger. He'd take the drawings to the shop and personally hand out the work. Roger would tell me to "give Helen the numbers" for all the purchased parts and materials. Helen was Roger's Machine Shop Secretary.

To source out purchased parts, I'd befriend the industry salesmen who'd give me tons of product catalogs....enriching my purchased parts knowledge. I'd crawl under cars in the Studio parking lot looking for specific parts I needed. Then I'd go to the junkyard and prowl the yard to get the parts I wanted. The Studio would send a purchase order to the yard and to to the various suppliers after I had picked up the parts. This was so easy. The vendor would call Helen while I waited at their place to get the P.O. number, and I'd return to the Studio with the parts.

I learned later that most organized companies never used this way of doing business. It sure was natural for me to go look at items, select what I wanted, then drive them back to the Studio. In this way I would have specific parts in hand from which I could get measurements to continue the fabrication drawings. No waiting for the purchasing or delivery departments.

I thought it was far faster to lay out an overall configuration first, then do some stress calculations later to refine the material dimensions. I know this is backwards from how engineers are taught, but it's way faster. And you get your design going visually very quick for all to see. When you continually observe the material proportions of successful designs, you get a reliable feel for sizing your new designs. The famed aircraft designer, Burt Rutan, does his work by the TLAR method....That Looks About Right. I'd sketch stuff in proportional scale, sometimes sizing thickness' by holding up a two finger gap.....TLAR.

Oddly enough, We began to suffer material failures later in the company after we hired lots of licensed experienced aerospace engineers. It seems that when you calculate loads accurately, there's the risk of going too small. Remember the lesson of the practiced gut-feel race car designer slowly evolving pragmatic designs rather than correctly engineered designs.

A normal engineering job typically might have all the drawings done and reviewed before release for production. I sent out the major parts drawings right away to get started. Then I'd do the pieces we'd need next and so on.

Most times I'd finish a final assembly drawing after we'd built the machine.

It's much more practical to draw maybe 80% of the parts, then sketch and art direct the final bits right in the shop. Sometimes I'd make the tricky parts myself and have the guys copy then for production.

I loved to work with all the shop guys to learn the easy way to build things. I'd then design these ideas into each new job. When I would be doing the testing, I'd find ways to make a machine operate simpler or easier to maintain. Again these field lessons went right back into the next new design. Also, I'd get the exact clean exterior appearance I wanted as a Stylist by engineering assembly details to hide many of the fasteners. This always made Disneyland Attractions and vehicles look very professional to the guest's eye. Never had a fight between Design and Engineering.

It's really a blessing in hindsight that I would be able to get away with virtually every detail my way, even when the big jobs had a dozen draftsmen helping me. It's also amazing now little interference the rest of the company put up with my designs start to finish. Roger Broggie directed all the manufacturing himself and sort of kept all intrusions at bay. This was an amazing period of productivity building Disneyland and Walt Disney World.

oOo

Next Month: Monorail Design Mk III & IV Case History