Went to Disneyland this week for the first time in 23 years. Yee Gawds, it's become a city in it's own right, but it still has various and sundry trains that are worth watching, so herewith a small selection:
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An 2-4-4-T pulling 3 freight cars and a caboose.
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4-4-0 American #1 pulls into Main Street Station towing three passenger cars. She's a life-sized copy of Walt Disney's own miniature live-steamer that he ran in his back yard during the 1950s, and she features a bench seat on the front end of her tender where two lucky passengers can ride along and watch the engine crew at work from three feet away.
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#1's lovely profile, up close and personal. Like everything in Disneyland she is absolutely immaculate. (All of the 3' gauge live steamers that run on the Disneyland Railroad burn bio-diesel fuel, and the engineers and firemen know their jobs so well that it's rare to see more than a tiny puff of pale brown smoke as the locos accelerate out of the stations.)
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2' gauge mock-up of a mining railroad accident. It isn't -and never was- functional, and simply serves as scenery for tourists who are riding the river boat (which is also steam-powered) or exploring Tom Sawyer Island.
Here's a URL for the Disneyland Railroad in case anyone wants more detail:
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I didn't bother taking any pics of the monorail as I don't know of anyone who models them, but there was one interesting thing about the monorail cars: Disney has painted them with light-refractive paints in various colors, and as the trains pass you by they change color depending on the angle you're viewing them from. Purple to bronze, red to blue, etcetera. Very eye-catching.
~Pete