Saturday, October 16, 2021

Saturday Film Club: Disney on railroads

Ignore the title, the YouTube idiot stuck on this - it's a fascinating film showing three Disney people and their railroads, including Walt's own garden line. 

Nice bit of filming, as you might expect, especially the segment with Kirk Douglas driving a train.

5 comments:

BR60103 said...

I saw that show when it was first on television in the 1950s. I now have it on DVD. The bit shown was followed by the cartoon Out of Scale.
Kirk Douglas was apparently unhappy about being shown in the TV show.

I read that there was an accident where some escaping steam frightened a little girl and Walt gave up the railroad; he was about to build Disneyland with a bigger train.

I've seen most of the surviving bits of the Carolwood Pacific. Lily Belle and a train are in the W D Family Museum in San Francisco. A couple of cars are at Disney World. The barn and a collection of artifacts are in Griffith Park in Los Angeles, on the Live Steamers property.
https://carolwood.com/walts-barn/
(The barn people are more approachable than the live steamers.)
Walt's house has been demolished and replaced (asbestos?). The railway is long gone. If I remeber from our bus tour, the Playboy mansion is across the street and Michael Jackson's house is on the next corner. It's an expensive area.

There is a film called Frank and Ollie. Ollie Johnston was the first modelller shown in the clip.
Ward Kimball's train is in the museum in Perris, Ca.

The largest scale model I have is a 1" to the foot version of Lily Belle and train. (Bachmann, runs on HO track) Largest scale, not largest model.


Sorry to go on, but it's one of my pet topics.

Phil Parker said...

Go on all you like - it's very interesting.

BR60103 said...

Out of Scale features Donald Duck building a backyard railroad. He moves Chip and Dale's Tree as it's out of scale and they proceed to take over.

Phil Parker said...

We featured Out of Scale a few months ago - terrific book and film, obviously inspired by Walt. https://philsworkbench.blogspot.com/2020/03/saturday-film-club-out-of-scale.html

BR60103 said...

And I commented on that!