The Trains of Disneyland

Among his many, many, many interests, Walt Disney was passionately in love with trains. Rail enthusiasm is a fairly common hobby, of course, but even among the many people with the inclination to build model railways, only a slim handful are dedicated enough to build an actual steam-powered rideable one in their backyard. Small wonder, then, that one of the inaugural attractions Walt planned for Disneyland was a train ride even more impressive than the Carolwood Pacific. Or that many more trains joined it in the years that followed.

This is a post about those trains. That's all—no deep philosophy or scathing opinions, just some warm and fuzzy feelings toward this surprisingly common attraction type. Think of it as part After-Action Report and part Sentimental Paleontology, with a big dollop of See Ya Real Soon added to the mix.

To be clear, I'm only talking about trains that are presented as trains. The Space Mountain vehicles technically qualify as trains but are presented as rockets.

All abooooaaaarrrrrrd!

Disneyland Railroad (1955)

This is of course the big one. When people refer to “the Disneyland train,” this is what they mean. It's been running since Opening Day and is one of the park's truly timeless attractions. As attraction concepts go, it's completely straightforward—it's a train. You get on it and go for a train ride. And along the way, you see bits and snatches of the rest of the park. Most of us probably take it for granted these days, but there's a real brilliance to how this was set up when Disneyland opened. The very first ride people encountered upon entering the park was this steam train—old-fashioned as of 1955 but still familiar, and perfectly in keeping with the theme of Main Street, USA, itself designed to be as non-threatening as possible so that people would accept this newfangled sort of amusement park. Then the train ride could introduce the rest of Disneyland in a comfortable, effortless fashion. By the time they made the full circuit, they would have a better idea of what they were in for over the course of the day.

Of course it's important to remember that even today, there are people going to Disneyland for the first time and not quite sure what to expect apart from the fact that their kids can hug Mickey Mouse. The Disneyland Railroad is there for them now, just as it was for people 62 years ago.

Besides being timeless, the train is very effectively multi-theme. In Main Street and on the park's west side, it's period-appropriate. In Fantasyland, it's an outsized toy train, especially as it chugs between the two layers of the “it's a small world” façade. Then it gets to Tomorrowland and spontaneously morphs into a time machine so we can go see the dinosaurs!

The Grand Canyon and Primeval World dioramas are kind of a sticking point with some people. It's true that they were put where they were because they didn't have a natural home in Disneyland, but were too cool to pass up. A fair number of park aficionados notice the above, as well as how badly the figures are aging,* and declare that the dioramas should be scrapped and replaced with something newer, hotter, and more Tomorrowland-ish. It's one of those suggestions that I have a knee-jerk aversion to, even though I'm not sure I have a convincing counter-argument. Would Disneyland be ruined without the dioramas? Certainly not. Are they out of place on the stretch of railway track between Tomorrowland and Main Street? Yeah. But...dammit, they're not hurting anything either. The dinosaurs in particular are iconic—World's Fair legacy stuff. You want naturalistic dinosaurs? Go to Universal Studios.

Plus, between the two of them the displays hold the world record for the longest diorama arrangement, and that's not nothing.

For the time being, the Disneyland Railroad is not available as a ride—part of the track is being re-routed in order to accommodate the Star Wars area. There is very strong evidence that parts of Nature's Wonderland (see below) are being reinstated as scenery along the new route, so it should be really interesting once the train is up and running again! In the meantime, some of the engines are being used as stationary exhibits at the Main Street and New Orleans Square stations, and at the latter you can even go up and blow the whistle! Now that's my kind of interactivity!

Casey Jr. Circus Train (1955)

Another Opening Day veteran, Casey Jr. is about as far removed from the Disneyland Railroad as you can get on the scale of pre-contemporary trains. While the latter is large, stately, of genuine historical interest, and usually considered one of the park's staple attractions, the latter is small, cutesy, cartoony, and I think people forget it exists a lot of the time. Disneyland has two rides inspired by the movie Dumbo, and it's the other one, so to speak. Still, the way kids gleefully climb into cage-cars labeled “Monkeys” and “Wild Animals” is always good for a laugh. And the way it shares its footprint with Storybook Land is a happy reminder of earlier design sensibilities when attractions were less sequestered from each other, and more harmonious overall.

Mine Train (1956)

The first iteration of this ride opened as far back as 1956, when all there was to see was the Living Desert and Rainbow Caverns—worth it? I would tend to assume so. There aren't many good photos going back that far. But in any case, just a few years later, the landscape was expanded and upgraded into Nature's Wonderland, with a much wider variety of delightful scenic views (and quite possibly the most misogynistic character ever to narrate a Disney ride—seriously, listen to this old coot).

The Mine Train Through Nature's Wonderland lasted until the year I was born, so I don't think I ever got to ride it and I certainly don't remember it first-hand. But I feel like I know it very well, because so much of it is still with us in the form of photo, audio, and video documentation, and even a few of the physical structures remained in place until very recently. A few other structures were moved when the area was renovated into Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and those aren't going anywhere any time soon.

The one fly in the ointment is that the cameras of the time could not properly record the Rainbow Caverns themselves. By all accounts, these were a truly spectacular sight—the homage in the first lift area of Big Thunder Mountain doesn't even come close. Given the near-certainty that portions of Nature's Wonderland will return alongside the new Disneyland Railroad track when it re-opens later this year, is it too much to hope that a Rainbow Caverns tunnel will be included?

Viewliner (1957)

This is almost certainly the most obscure train on this list. I myself was born about twenty years too late to have ridden it. This was one of Walt Disney's early “transportation of the future” experiments, but it wasn't very successful; my understanding is that the engines ran too hot and it spent long periods of downtime before being retired, just fifteen months after it opened. It ran between Tomorrowland and Fantasyland, through an area that has changed so much in the interim that I can barely picture what the trip must have been like.

Disneyland Monorail (1959)

This, then, is the successful “transportation of the future” train ride—so successful that it's still being used as legitimate transportation (between Disneyland and Downtown Disney) today, in the actual future! It is impossible to overstate the importance of the Monorail to Disneyland's history and development, and even beyond its pragmatic purpose, it's a very pleasant ride.

And come on—the Downtown Disney stop is right across from The LEGO Store. I know that's not going to mean much to everybody, but it's a thing of beauty to me.

Big Thunder Mountain Railroad (1979)

We can see from the two-decade gap between the last new train ride and this one that the culture at Disneyland was already changing. Or maybe it's just that once you have a certain number of trains, you don't need more? Since this ride directly replaced a previous train ride (the Mine Train, for those of you with short-term memory loss or poor attention spans), I might be more inclined to believe the latter.

I know of people who think removing the Mine Train in favor of a mine train-themed roller coaster was a mistake, and I can kind of see their point. Nature's Wonderland was both beautiful and unique, while Big Thunder Mountain Railroad was the third roller coaster Disneyland either installed or upgraded in as many years, and that in response to an existing trend at other theme parks such as Six Flags. It was a major sign that Disney didn't know what to do with itself without Walt around...which I guess goes back to the culture thing.

However, I think it just goes to show that even when Disney is following the leader, they tend to put their own spin on things and raise the bar. Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is a great roller coaster. It's not the fastest or the twistiest, but it is possibly the most scenic. Its landscape is basically a higher-octane version of Nature's Wonderland, even re-using some of the props and animatronics from the earlier ride. The setting of an abandoned gold mine is exotic and mysterious, the punny names inscribed on the engines (U.R. Daring, I.B. Hearty, etc.) speak well to our sense of adventure, and of course the tyrannosaur skeleton adorning the faux-splashdown finale is one of the highlights of the entire park.

This is the last explicit train ride to be added to Disneyland. I'm glad it's a worthy one.

Walt Disney loved trains. And through his theme park he got the rest of us to love them too.

* The dinosaurs conceptually—science has moved on so far since they were built—and the taxidermied Grand Canyon animals...well, physically. Those poor things have seen better days.