Finally, the latest installment of my trip report. I was going to do it last weekend, but Subsonic was down.
Friday August 23, 2013
we get up early - 6 AM - to get dressed, packed, eat breakfast, check-out and check lugagge with the bell service. This was a one day trip, and the day at the park begins before the park even opens - at 7:15 AM. Unfortunately, that means we can't take a monorail from the Contemporary to the MK. Yep, had to hoof it.
So we walked...wait! SQUIRREL!
Had to do that. I know MmeLeota will appreciate that. But we were surprised to see how many wild rabbits were running around the place:
We arrived at the outside of the train station area and the whole area was vacant. We arrived early for the BTS Steam Train Tour. Our tour guide arrived on time to take us in:
And so did the train that will take us on the tour, the Roy Disney:
It was cool to see Main Stret totally devoid of life but I was stopped from taking a photo. Why? There was a pick-up truck on the street and security guidelines don't allow it to be photographed with an anachronistic vehile present. No joke. The train took the loop to the Fantasyland Station, once there, the switch was thrown, and we slowly reversed off the the park loop back into the "roundhouse" facility. They call it a roundhouse, but in reality, it's not. More like a depot. But it also stores the monorails when not in use:
And the building in the background of this picture is the machine shop were many ride components and AA are assembled for the parks:
But we're here for the trains. The Roy Disney went back on its way and left us with the other two, the Walt Disney and Roger Broggie:
The Walt Disney is used only for the morning opening show and then returns back to the "roundhouse". Here's the where one of the trains would be stored in the "roundhouse":
That opening in the ground is "the pit". When a train is parked there, the locomotive is over the pit which allows the mechanics to work on the underneath of the locomotive. But our tour was with the Roger Broggie:
Tim was a good tour guide and imparted some interesting bits of information:
* These are not standard size locomotives and passenger cars. These are a narrow guage (means the rails are closer) than the normal guage.
The reason behind using this size is because of Main Street itself. With diminishing scale of the buildings, a full size train would be out of scale.
* The train (locomotive and passenger cars) have a combined weight of 85 tons.
* The train does NOT run on coal, but #2 low phosphorous oil (diesel).
* The locomotive has NO brakes. The brakes are on the passenger cars. However, the passenger cars have no power source for the brakes.
The locomotive has the power source for the brakes. So, for the brakes to work, the train (locomotive and passenger cars) are needed to be together.
Standard size locomotives (not these narrow guage) normally would have brakes on the locomotives.
* The trains were not built for WDW. They purchased from the Yucatan Railroad in Mexico and transported from the Mexico border to Florida.
* When the trains return at night and the fire for the boiler is turned off, the locomotive do not fully cool down. It actually takes 48+ hours
for a locomotive to fully cool down.
We even got to see the controls inside the cab of the locomotive:
Interesting bits:
* the "Johnson Bar" is like a gear shift in car, and it has three settings: forward, neutral and reverse.
* the water guage and the pressure guage for the boiler.
* the throttle.
* the speedometer. The train is limited to running to around 10 mph in the park (about 5 mph when reversing). It exceeds the set upper limit,
an alarm will go off and the engineer will get in trouble for exceeding the speed limit.
* The engineers are unable to sit facing foward. There's not the room. One leg is forward, while the other is at 90 degrees.
Well, it's time to return back to theMK. Time to light the boiler:
Next we would board the passenger car, followed by the pressure cap-off before we rode the Roger Broggie back to the park. Back at the park, where after a brief break, we continued the tour in the train station where Tim the Tour Guide explained all things concerning the trains, including who Roger Broggie was, the Carrolwood railroad at Walt's home, the Ft. Wilderness railway train, and the purchase deal with Yucatan Railroad. Even the fact of who's listed as the head of MK railroad:
Next time: the rest of the day in the park...
