Michael Campbell has married his love of trains with a passion for the history of Walt Disney. In 2014, his years of research became a special exhibit at the Walt Disney Family Museum called “All Aboard: A Celebration of Walt’s Trains,” which you can learn more about in our event coverage. He has also hosted several speaker events, including “A Day of Railroading at the Walt Disney Family Museum.” He was recently a guest during the WDFM Happily Ever After Hours virtual event series, giving a presentation about his experience with trains and Walt Disney. Here are ten things we learned from Michael Campbell.
1. You can learn a lot about Walt Disney as a person through his love of trains.
“It’s been my privilege throughout the last twenty or so years to better understand Walt through the prism of railroads,” Michael Campbell shared. Quoting Plato, “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” Walt Disney had a railroad in his backyard, making trains his ultimate playground.
2. All Michael wanted to do at Disneyland was ride the train.
Michael’s only trip to Disneyland as a child was when he was six-years-old. Already having a deep love and understanding of trains, he wore a railroad engineer costume on his visit and the Main Street Train Station was his first stop. As the train pulled in, a conductor spotted him and brought him to the engine to explain how trains run. Michael stopped him, explaining that he already knew all of this. The conductor put Michael on his lap and let him ride in the engine, something kids would never be allowed to do today. His memories of the event are still very vivid.
3. Michael met Diane Disney Miller while helping to establish the Carolwood Society.
Michael met Diane Disney Miller through Michael Brogie, who was helping the Disney family take apart Walt Disney’s backyard barn so that it could be reassembled as part of the Carolwood Society. Edna Disney had recently passed away and the family’s home was being sold.
4. The first Walt Disney trains exhibit wasn’t at the Walt Disney Family Museum.
Before the Walt Disney Family Museum was even an idea, the Ronald Reagan Library was doing a special trains exhibit and wanted to display Walt Disney’s backyard train. After that, the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento wanted to have a section devoted to Walt Disney’s trains. They saw a huge increase in attendance after the Lilly Belle was installed, which started Diane’s interest in starting her own museum dedicated to her father.
5. How Diane Disney Miller Got Walt Disney’s Original Lilly Belle.
As longtime visitors of Disneyland know, the engine to Walt Disney’s original backyard train was on display in the Main Street Train Station. There was a second train built for display at Retlaw Enterprises, Walt Disney’s personal company that built the Disneyland railroad, which was in Diane’s possession. When the Reagan library asked to display the train, they wanted the original and Disneyland agreed to a swap. It has remained in the Disney family’s possession ever since.
6. Ron Miller had a shortened version of the Michael Campbell’s train exhibit displayed at the Napa Valley Museum.
When “All Aboard: A Celebration of Walt’s Trains” ended its run at the Walt Disney Family Museum, Ron Miller asked Michael if he could produce a condensed version for the Napa Valley Museum, near the Disney family’s Silverado Vineyards estate. During the grand opening, Ron Miller asked if he could share a video of him driving the Lilly Belle in Walt Disney’s backyard, footage nobody knew he had, not even his children. Michael shared the video during the Happily Ever After Hours event. Walt Disney isn’t featured in the video because he was running the camera.
7. The same people who built the Death Star built the dream model of Disneyland at the museum.
Kerner Optical built the model of Disneyland displayed at the Walt Disney Family Museum, which is full of all of the ideas that Walt Disney had for his park, representing a version of the Happiest Place on Earth that only existed in his imagination. Kerner Optical is an offshoot of Industrial Light and Magic, started by George Lucas with the model builders who worked on the Star Wars films. Michael also shared that when the model was first installed, the train ran. It was designed by Lowell Smith and was even sold at Disneyland for a little while. However, the train broke down a lot or would jump the tracks and doesn’t currently run.
9. Disneyland asked him for help when the trains couldn’t run during Galaxy’s Edge construction.
Michael Campbell helped with a trains exhibit in the Disney Gallery in 2011 that ran for 6-months. One Saturday in 2016, he got a call from the Imagineers he worked with on that project telling him the railroad wouldn’t be able to operate during construction and they wanted to set up exhibits at the train stations. Walt Disney’s famous quote, “It’s kind of fun to do the impossible,” was running through his head because the request was for delivery of items the following Monday and the exhibits opened that Tuesday.
9. Diane Disney Miller didn’t write “My Dad, Walt Disney.”
One day, Michael found a lenticular button promoting the articles My Dad, Walt Disney by Diane Disney Miller, which were later collected into a book called The Story of Walt Disney. He gave it to her and she was surprised because she had never seen one before. That’s when she turned to him and said, “You know, I didn’t write that book.” Michael was aware that Peter Martin was involved, but according to Diane Disney Miller, Pete did all of the interviews with her father and all of the writing. Her role was more like that of a supervisor. In a reprint of the book, she wrote a forward explaining how the book came to be so it wasn’t a secret anymore.
10. His plans for a train exhibit were originally much smaller.
“The last project I worked on with Diane was for the museum,” Michael shared. There’s a reading rail that snakes along the ramp that goes past the suspended Lilly Belle. “The first iteration of the reading rail was good, but it left out Walt’s voice.” Michael shared his feelings with Diane and she agreed. He wrote the text and she edited it for the version of the rail that exists today. During that project, he expressed his desire to do something else in the museum to celebrate Walt Disney’s love of trains. He was thinking something more along the lines of a train around a Christmas tree during the holidays, but she passed along his ideas as more of a special exhibit. After she passed away, he got a call from the museum letting him know that the exhibit hall was looking for something special and asked him to revisit the concept, which became “All Aboard: A Celebration of Walt’s Trains.”
Michael Campbell Walt Disney Family Museum Event Coverage: