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How Disneyland Lost its Railroad Sponsor
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 ส.ค. 2024
- The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway sponsored multiple Disneyland attractions over the course of 20 years. How did this iconic company get involved with the park, and why did this relationship eventually fall apart?
Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
1:29 - A Cultural Icon
4:09 - Walt’s New Enterprise
5:48 - The Partnership Begins
9:06 - Rolling Toward the Future
12:03 - Highway in the Sky
15:05 - End of the Line
18:24 - Epilogue
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Music playlist:
• Music from "The Railro...
This video is for educational purposes and is distributed for non-commercial use. It is not monetized or sponsored. All video footage, images and audio recordings are the property of their original owners and are used in accordance with Fair Use principles.
That story about how Walt's father was a man of the railroad, telling legends and folktale along this classic and romantic way of transportation, really made me understand Walt Disney's ideals a lot more, and why he saw his people's history the way he did.
It was his uncle. I think his father was a farmer.
Uncle!
@@rocketman1969 oopsie doe
It's funny how they turned Marciline Missouri into a country disneyworld even though Walt only spent his childhood there not too far from the busy transcon of the Santa Fe. His Uncle was a railroad man for the Santa Fe, but not through there, but more where Walt would end up creating the home base for his Disneyland.
I work on restoring a steam engine that Walt often road in. The former Santa Maria Valley #21, Walt was there for its last run in 1962. The name of our nonprofit is the Astoria Railroad Preservation Association. This was a great story!
Peter Dibble? Trains? More Disneyland?? Am I dreaming?? What a way to start the day.
Do we smell a Peter Dibble and Defunctland team up?
Speaking of sponsorships, Art Linkletter, seen in this video chatting with Walt Disney and Gov. Knight on the station platform, was asked by Walt Disney to emcee the opening ceremonies for Disneyland. Walt was concerned that due to the cost overruns and other financial issues, he couldn’t really afford to pay Art much. Art agreed to host the ceremonies and television coverage for union scale, which at the time, would be around $200. In exchange, he asked for the photographic concessions for ten years. Art would pay the regular concession fee and he would keep the profits on all Kodak camera and film sales within the park. That ten year concession contract became the most lucrative in television at the time; a record that stood for many years. In an interview, Art Linkletter said that his biggest regret was not buying real estate in Orange County.
Great story about an actually rarely-discussed sponsor of Disneyland. I'm glad Ward Kimball got his own train many years later. He was so influential in the inception of Disneyland and the railroad itself.
And right next to the Disney Museum in his hometown of Marceline, Missouri is a Santa Fe SD40 diesel locomotive now sitting on display.
The AeroTrain also inspired the Zooliner at the Oregon Zoo.
Would love to see a video on the history of the zoo railway.
Peter, you of course are the only one who can make it happen.
Yes indeed - I would like to tackle that someday, it's been written down in my list for a long time.
@@peterdibble I can put you in contact of someone who owns the 1/8th scale locomotive that was also built by the same person who built the zoo steam train if you do end up getting there.
Thank you for this video, Peter. You created a documentary masterpiece with this one. I felt so sad to see the Santa Fe logos come down from Disneyland in 1974. I was only 14 then and had been going to Disneyland almost every year since I was 2. My family lived in Tustin, just 10-15 minutes from Disneyland on I-5. Tustin was also no stranger to the Santa Fe, having both the railway’s San Diegan mainline passing through the southwest side of town as well as its freight spur off that mainline serving Tustin’s and Irvine’s Sunkist packing houses. It was called the "Venta Spur" - hence, giving rise to the name of my own TH-cam channel.
For all the aforementioned reasons, I have always loved the Santa Fe railway. Its red, yellow and silver "Warbonnet" livery on passenger diesels stood out as perhaps the most iconic, attractive and recognizable paint scheme among all passenger railroads in America at the time. The distinctive Warbonnet design dominated model train locomotives, too, inspiring generations of hobby enthusiasts like me. From my recollection of model train sets on sale every Christmas season during the 1960s and 70s, I observed that model trains bearing Santa Fe’s distinctive design and colors were more often advertised and sold than those of any other competitor railroad modeled - an enduring testimony to Santa Fe’s popular livery indeed.
Now I model the Santa Fe railway in 1:160th scale - called N scale by model railroaders. Although Santa Fe’s logos and liveries vanished decades ago from the American scene, their legacy lives on through modelers like me and many, many others.
-Thomas Lincoln Pilling
The irony is the southwest chief is still running from LA to Chicago, but its biggest enemy is freight trains causing it delays. also, Disneyland is so expensive that now that I have discovered how much I love the Chief, i'm not sure when I will be back to properly appreciate Walt's homage to a line I have come to love as much as i did trips to Disneyland as a kid.
Sante Fe initially allowed AMTRAK to use the Super Chief name, but revoked that permission later, saying that AMTRAK's service failed to live up to the Super Chief name. Ironically, that failure was due to Sante Fe's own freight trains.
And BNSF was acquired by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway...who has investments in Disney.
it's all connected
Slight correction... Berkshire Hathaway does not own any Disney stock. New England Asset Management, a Berkshire subsidiary does have like 15,000 shares, but that is a VERY insignificant amount for Disney or Berkshire.
For the first few minutes I was convinced I was watching a Defunctland video 😂
Really well done doc Peter.. I can remember riding on the SF&D as a kid!
So many memories of the train and it's personable and sometimes hilarious crews. Once, they posed a trivia contest to come up with the lyrics to a *very* obscure song. My brother walked right up and recited the lyrics. Don't think they expected to get an answer. They said the prize was another trip around the park for free. Which it was anyway, at that time.
I did the inflation math, $250K in 1955, is nearly $3M in today's dollars! Imagine if Disneyland were to have the BNSF, or Amtrak as a sponsor in the present day...
Disney Corp. just might be able to _buy_ that RR.
Nicely done, Peter! Very informative!
Thanks, Alex! I hope some folks will go check out your longer documentary on the Disneyland Railroad as well: th-cam.com/video/ed0ymeIsFig/w-d-xo.html
I volunteer at the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City. One of the crown jewels of the line is the "Inyo," an 1875 wood burning locomotive that had a small part in Disney history, being a locomotive Walt used twice for his movies, "So Dear to My Heart" and "The Great Locomotive Chase," and was even at the 1948 Railroad Fair. I love knowing that my sleepy little town is the home base for a locomotive that lived such an interesting life and has been valued by such interesting people as Walt Disney himself.
Any day is a good day when Peter drops a new video!!
Once Walt died, it was the end of the line for the sponsorship and he wouldn't have cared about the changes unless his spirit would sabotage the diesel.
The sponsorship didn't really make much sense anyways after Santa Fe dumped their passenger service on to Amtrak like everybody else.
@@Geotpf The Penn Central/New York Central merger was a planned bad idea to begin with because it was very obvious where the agenda wanted to go when they figured out it was easier to drive a car and with the Stagger's Act. that was the end of big railroad passenger train service as we knew it. Santa Fe had their plane idea taken away by the airlines who didn't want to have a railroad taking all of their business and Amtrak has been very successful regionally versus long distance.
Then there’s the Bus Industry. Trailways, Greyhound buses were the only ones that enjoyed profits till they went out of business? The regulations against the railroads of the 50’ really screwed people.
When Walt died, the “Dream Died” yet this is a very beautiful documentary video! I grew up during the 70’s and I remember watching the “Silver Streak” movie. Gene Wilder, and Richard Pryor were the comedy duo in the movie. 😂👍👍🤣💯💯
@@lawnmowermanTX There was a Greyhound bus terminal right at Downtown Houston which was in operation for years before it shutdown in the early two thousands though the Amtrak station still remains to this day with them still using the spur track to get on the Sunset line.
Very enjoyable, I had no idea of the close association Walt Disney had with the Santa Fe railroad. I got a kick out of you, including mention of the failed SPSF merger at the end of the video... it conjured up memories of the fantastic video you did many years ago on that failed merger.
Honey, wake up.
New Peter Dibble video just dropped
I like it how Disneylland had the gall to send Santa Fe a bill to change the logos on their buildings and trains after the contract had finished!
A little fact that you didn't mention is that Disneyland did not own the railroad or monorail. Walt set up a separate company called RETLAW (spell it backwards) that owned the railroad and monorail and was paid a set fee per rider from Disneyland. RETLAW passed to the Disney family after Walt's death and wasn't acquired by the Disney company until early in the Michael Eisner era of Disney management.
Walt Disney was a master of setting up shell companies. One of them was used to buy land that became Walt Disney World. It was called M. T. Lott. ( Empty Lot )
Oh wow, this was great! And as soon as that first clip of the Super Chief dining car came up, I thought, "I wonder if this was sourced from 'Great Railway Journeys of the World'". So glad you used that footage (including the "modern era" freight cars in Chicago.) I loved that series growing up, and it's so fun to see it pop up again here. Keep making awesome video, Peter!
Oh happy day! Something to look forward to sitting back and enjoying this weekend!
The little Indian boy in front of the sign for the Grand Canyon opening ceremony was a character that Santa Fe used on its printed public timetables at the time. On the timetables, the boy was drawing the Santa Fe logo in the sand in the same stance as shown here at 11:33.
The character was named Chico.
Santa Fe all the way!
I worked for the ATSF from 1981-1984, right after college. DisneyLand was never discussed. Capacity of track, repair shops, equipmemt and labor was too high and cuts were made. The company returned to sustainable profitability during deregulation and engineered their purchase by the much larger Burlington Northern in the late 1980's.
Fascinating and informative documentary. I plan to archive this documentary in my Disneyland history file. Thank you and well-done.
A lot of people don't know that Walt Disney was one of the founding members of what would become the Los Angels Live Steamers Rail Road and Museum, a group of live steam modelers here in Los Angeles. They still operate for the public every Sunday, and are on Zoo Drive at the north end of Griffith Park, right close to where I live (about 10 minutes away).
Very impressive work again Peter, thank you so much for sharing your one of your talents with us.
The Chicago Rock Island & Pacific Railroad (better known as the Rock Island) actually purchased an Aero Train set for use between Chicago and Peoria and this train was known as the "Jet Rocket." The train operated from February 1956 to May 1957 when the train was pulled out of intercity service and instead used in Rock Island suburban service out of Chicago. The Rock Island also purchased the two experimental Aero Train sets and also used them in commuter service. The Jet Rocket set was eventually scrapped in the mid 1960s. But thankfully, the two original, experimental Aero Train sets had their iconic locomotives (designed by General Motors Harley Earl and Charles "Chuck" Jordan) and two passenger cars each donated to the National Transportation Museum near St Louis, MO and the National Railway Museum at Green Bay, WI where they can be seen today.
Huzzah, a new video from Peter Dibble, and it's about trains! (Albeit on a modest scale, but hey!) What a way to start the weekend.
Another amazing and underrated video by Peter
Fantastic video but the only small thing I'd add would be to mention during the "Walt's New Enterprise" section of Walter Knott having started his narrow-gauge layout at Knott's Berry Farm in 1951 and invited Walt & Lillian Disney to the January 12, 1952 opening of the Ghost Town & Calico Railroad. The two Walts were well known to be friends and ran ideas back and forth. I'm sure Knott invited Disney knowing his affinity for the railroad and Disney would have accepted with the idea of also seeing how he managed it.
Love your vintage historical videos.
I went on the train 8 weeks ago it was the best thing ever
Peter dibble + Trains = Cool stuff
thank you so much, this was such a wonderful video and I really do enjoy the history of disney's railroad ^ ^!
Awesome deep dive into something new to me about Disneyland! Also just wanted to say your visual design consistency is very impressive and this one had a great use of video and still images. Very well done 😊
Thanks very much!
Very nice presentation. Thank you.
Another absolute banger from Peter Dibble. Happy days.
In a cyberworld of amateur history/documentary videos this one stands out for high production value and presentation; a diamond in a field of dirt clods...
In 1956 my Mickey Mouse rubber doll was my favorite toy! I was enamored with Mickey Mouse all of my life! I wish my parents had put the Mickey Mouse watch away instead of let a 6-year-old kid go to school with it and leave it in a desk! I would be a wealthy man today!
I have a 3" diameter pin-back flex button from 1958, family took me when I was 4. It changes from Mickey's smiling face, to "I Like Disneyland!"
It's still in it's original excellent condition. I wonder it's current value?
Excellent documentary!
Love your videos. Weirdly enough, this one did not show up in my feed
Santa Fe wasn't the first major railroad to dieselize. As far as I know, the NYSW has that title with full dieselization happening in 1945. Lehigh & New England was in 1949 with the EJ&E about a month behind it. Gulf Mobile & Ohio was also able to completely replace steam in 1949, New Heaven in 1952, and Southern Railway and Western Pacific in 1953. Santa Fe didn't Dieselize until 1957.
Number 3 is my favorite locomotive on the Disneyland Railroad. It was discovered, if memory serves, in a Louisiana salvage yard, having spent its career hauling cars of sugar cane. Fortunately, it was discovered, trucked to Southern California, and refurbished so it could spend its "retirement" hauling visitors around the outskirts of Disneyland. . .
Always felt C.K.Holliday #1 was the perfect realization of an early 4-4-0 design. Cute too.
@@spikespa5208 Very well-proportioned, and stylish, too; a nice-looking engine. . .
Another great video as always!
I grew up during the declining years of the railroad.
Early in my grade school years our class toured one of the common
railroad passenger cars. This one was green.
In the years that we had class field trips, we always rode on school buses,
even though the train tracks ran through town.
Last time I drove by those tracks, they were largely unmaintained.
The cattle loading pens, once the largest of their time and place, are long gone.
Documentary levels of quality. Thank you
Very well done as usual, Peter!
9:45 fun fact I met Bob Gurr just recently! He’s an awesome Disney imagineer!
You've done it again, Mr. Dibble, many thanks indeed from a rail buff and enjoyer of your content.
The contrast between the founder-led storytellers at Disney approaching Santa Fe because Walt grew up with the romance of the golden age of rail, and the legacy corporation in the unromantic logistics business making the cold rational decision that the sponsorship wasn't worth continuing because with Amtrak taking over passenger service Santa Fe was no longer a consumer-facing brand, jumped right out with me.
Love your videos keep em coming!!
Excellent, as always.
Thanks for this..nicely done :)
Great video, thanks!
I would love to see this sponsorship/partnership reinstated. It is never too late. This would provide needed positivity/goodwill to both companies in this ever-corporate dominated culture. Disney, are you listening?
Watching a livestream last week of ppl at Disneyland, I asked if anyone remembered the train ride. They put me out of the conversation. I thought at the time that they must not have known there had been a train there.( The 20somethings seem very dismissive of what they have not experienced themselves.) Thanks for the Memory.
Excellent video!
I liked the sponsorship, making the railroad seem like a subsidiary of the Santa Fe, and the implication it gave that the engines were preserved ATSF locomotives! With that angle, the Santa Fe did have several locomotives that did not look too unlike the Disneyland engines (but then again, so did most if not all US railroads at the time). After the partnership ended, I think the railroad lost some of its character, and the post-1974 livery giving to them looked relatively sterile. However, what charm was lost with the sponsorship ending I feel has really been regained starting around the 50th anniversary in 2005. I really like how they brought back the original paint schemes, and used the extra space to spell out RAILROAD! Really, I think what they did with the new liveries really makes the attraction seem more like a historic railroad in its own right... Although I don't understand why the Ernest S. Marsh hasn't gotten its old style livery yet...
Yeah another Dibble video 🚂🎉!
Quality work, I was looking for Disney corporate support in the credits.
The Southern Railway was the first class 1 US railroad to dieselize. It retired its last steam locomotive in 1953.
2:07 Johnny Mercer Originally wrote the song.
Wow...great video.
I literally cried my eyes out when I heared Bing Crosby's song!😅😍🥰 THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THAT!!!❤❤❤
Excellent historic Vlog !
Great video as usual. :]
New sub.Great vid. lots of info.Produced the Whistle StopTV series.Worked at the studio My dream job. Knew Ward Kimball and Ollie Johnson.. Studio had a library mainly for the animators but it housed all of Walt's personal train book collection. I used to spend a lot of my lunch hours researching. Thank you, to Walt and Roy. for the privilege of working for the greatest entertainment company.
I was pleasantly surprised to see a black and white photo of Durham, NC's, Union Station which was demolished in the early 1960's.
Great video...👍
Adore this channel, just wish there were more local PNW centric content like this!
At 5/8th size, it's not a miniature train, but a narrow gauge railroad.
That's what I was going to say! It's a fullsize narrow-gauge railroad. I don't know why everybody in the documentary are calling it "5/8 scale miniature".
The Disney parks can feel a bit overrated at times, but the trains do not disappoint!
Is there any chance you could do a documentary of the Steam operations of BC Rail?
Interesting, good info.
At 7:28 I hope people read the fine print there because there's much misinformation about the locomotives. The first two were fantasy locomotives designed by WED and built at the Disney studios. The others are vintage Baldwins that Disney restored. The difference in appearance is obvious, the vintage locomotives having a plain workmanlike look, the fantasy ones being very ornate and with a place for Guests to ride up front. None of the 5 locomotives are "miniature" or "5/8 scale" but fullsize Narrow Gauge engines. (A Cessna isn't a "miniature" 747, the Cessna is the size it was designed to be for its purpose.) The story I heard (which I can't vouch for) is that Engines 3 and 4 were purchased from a logging operation on the Yucatan Peninsula. They were in poor shape having been repeatedly patched up and sent back out to work.
Ill be honest Idont think i ever heard about the Viewliners
Well done, Thanks
5:12 Actually… The Santa Fe wasn't the first to be dieselized. _That_ in of itself is a whole debate. Shortlines (smaller local railroads) are known to dieselize very early on with some going far back as the 1920s with examples like the Strasburg Railroad (Chartered in _1832_ and is still running to this day) with its single Plymouth Switcher (that ironically they still operate) displacing some hand me down PRR steamers.
For Class Ones major roads like the ATSF (acronym for the Santa Fe), it gets confusing.
The true first class one to dieselize was the New York Susquehanna and Western in 1945.
Next up in my opinion goes to The Chicago, Indianapolis, and Louisville Railway (better known as the MONON). John W Barringer III (who took over presidency of the MONON in 1945) took one look at the railroad and dieselized the whole system in _1946!_ Closeby, The Gulf Mobile and Ohio went the same route in 1947-1949.
Several other railroads followed suit including: The Erie (1951), New Haven (1952), Delaware and Hudson (1953), Southern Railway of Crescent Limited fame (1953), Western Maryland (1954), and even the Western Pacific (1953-4) all dieselized BEFORE The Santa Fe.
Steam _actually_ held on longer until 1957 for two things. Excursions, and more importantly, Helper service in New Mexico. The second to last steam locomotive to run was Santa Fe 5021 (a 2-10-4 Texas type that ironically is still around). The last ATSF steamer to run by LA and along the famous Cajon Pass goes to 3759, which it too is on display.
After that, no more steam on ATSF mainline rails until 3751(the railroads first and oldest 4-8-4 Northern and older sibling to 3759) was restored to full operation. The only other engine to run on active mainline rails of ATSF’s successor would be 3751’s younger and bulkier cousin, 2926 based out of New Mexico that took FOREVER to restore.
Moral of the story, finding out who dieselized first is a losing battle.
CB&Q was the first for a big class one
@@stephenheath8465 nope. It fully dieselized in 1959-60
Loco's from Orlando were at Strasburg railroad in 2010/2011, but they somehow screwed up the contract and lost it.
Nice.
I maybe had named it "The History of Disneyland's Railway" instead pointing how they lost the Sponsor, because the Story how they have lost the Sponsor would fit in just 5 Minutes Video and would not as good as it is now.
one other thing is the trains at Disneyland are all 3 foot gauge!
its JUST BNSF Railway now
also SPSF means Shouldn't Paint So Fast 🤣
the old passenger cars still have SF&D RR on them but have been sold to the Pacific Coast Railroad!
AND Tyco Trains in the 1960s had a whole SF&D RR set made!
you should do a story about Walt Disney and his house he had on the Deschutes river in Oregon and his favorite fly fishing spot there called the Disney riffle
It's kind of funny, me having lived in Southern California all my life, and the ONLY trains I've been on in the United States have been the trains at Disneyland and Knotts Berry Farm, while I've been to Europe 3 times and traveled through 7 countries, having gone thousands of miles via the Eurail Train System Network.
The SPSF was prevented on the grounds of not wanting the industry to effectively be two major and one middle player amongst the domestic ones (since the only real other major players where CP and CN), which made no sense in the context of mergers that had been allowed and only resulted in each being eaten up by the two major players they where trying to compete against anyway.
i know this man did not forget the southern railway ran its last steam hauled service on June 17th 1953
Did I miss your including that the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe railroad reaching California was a mandate from the government, that the Southern Pacific help create a second rail carrier in the region because of the monopoly it held on long distance transport in the Southwest, including the steamship services all along the California coast. That competition was a big part of why Santa Fe services were so much better than other railways, and probably that history informed the denial of the SPSF merger leading to the BNSF instead.
Incidentally, here is another Orange County history fact: Southern Pacific was kept from reaching San Diego by James Irvine, who would not allow that railroad to cross his massive ranch property. You will note that it was Santa Fe that did get to build through. That may have been a part of the government's incentive for the creation of the great railroad it became.
Irvine and Collis P. Huntington were on the same ship coming to California, and for some reason they developed an enmity. I think the government trust-busters wanted San Diego to have service and that became part of the solution.
I have to say Santa Fe & Disney make a great partnership. I also believe the Santa Fe name should stay in Disneyland because of that great help and the 2 go perfect together.
Disney should have gone after William Buffet, the owner of the NBSF RR!
Thank you
Where did you get that train wash footage from?
BNSF or common noun at Santa FeSF is commonly known for its diesels
Hot diggity! New video just dropped!!!
19:25 "Shouldnt Paint So Fast"
What’s the music at the end?
The music playlist is linked in the description 🎵
Santa Fe all the way!
BNSF at Disneyland would be wild 💀
Oh yeah, another railroad video!
Weren't the viewliners also made from car parts as well?
It's really interesting how a lot of early attractions were built in-house with local workshops and expertise. Disneyland originally built many of its 1955 opening day attractions and rudimentary robotics precursors to Audio Animatronics at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank. I believe they just utilized set builders to construct everything at the studio, with archival footage showing stuff like ghe Mark Twain Steamboat, Disneyland Railroad coaches, and stagecoaches being built and assembled at the studio. WED Enterprises did just utilize a lot of salvaged parts from everyday items to help create ride vehicles and special effects in those early years before advancing in technology and construction practices, it's actually quite endearing.
It's the same story with the nearby Knott's Berry Farm too where a lot of early ride attractions tions were subcontracted out with quite a few going to Bud Hurlburt who had a workshop nearby. He made miniature steam trains and antique car rides in that workshop and shipped them over to Knott's. His crowning achievements were the construction of the Calico Mine Ride and the Timber Mountain Log Ride which are still some of the most premiere rides at the parks.
Honestly the early histories of a lot of theme and amusement parks have similar stories of having attractions built by small teams usually in house or subcontracted locally and just using whatever they had on hand and mind to mash the idea out. It's fascinating, really.