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New
Horizons: |
Walt's New Hobbies |
At long last, Walt could turn his
love
of trains into a hobby.
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That fall Walt wrote to his sister
Ruth to inquire as to whether her son -- named Ted,
after his father ? might like a train set for Christmas.
According to "Walt Disney's Railroad Story," an
absorbing book about Walt's love affair with trains
by Michael Broggie, "He made the same offer to his
niece Marjorie Davis, for her son Geoffrey, and
his brother Herbert's grandson, David Puder. Underscoring
this gift suggestion was Walt's desire to create
a railroad hobby for himself. If the hobby also
provided an opportunity to share trains with kids
in the family, so much the better."
That Christmas he wrote
Ruth again. "I bought myself a birthday-Christmas
present," he proudly reported, "something I've wanted
all my life -- an electric train. Being a girl,
you probably can't understand how much I wanted
one when I was a kid, but I've got one now, and
what fun I'm having. I have it set up in one of
the outer rooms adjoining my office, so I can play
with it in my spare moments. It's a freight train
with a whistle, and real smoke comes out of the
smokestack -- there are switches, semaphores, station,
and everything. It's just wonderful!" |
Walt had given up on polo a few years
before -- after an accident that crushed four of
his cervical vertebrae ? so he had time to throw
himself into his new hobby. He built miniatures
-- many of which complemented his trains ? that
required hours of painstaking effort, and took great
pride in his handiwork. "He'd come up to the dinner
table," recalled Diane, and "bring this little piece
of wood he had [been working on], and sit
there all through dinner and be so proud of it.
He'd pass it around for inspection." It was a natural
hobby for Walt. He had loved trains since his childhood,
waiting for his Uncle Mike Martin, a railroad engineer,
to emerge with bags of candy from the line that
passed by Marceline. As an adult, Lilly remembered,
"We'd go over and stand and watch the trains coming
in. And after they'd go by he'd watch the vibrations
on the tracks . . . that was recreation.". |
Walt spent many hours of painstaking
effort to build miniatures.
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Walt and Ward pose as Wild West-Era
train machinists during the Chicago
Railroad Fair of 1948
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In 1948 he took one of his animators,
Ward Kimball, on a trip to the Chicago Railroad
Fair. This was an ideal choice; Kimball was a railroad
fan too, and he loved toys of all kinds. "In the
mornings, we'd go down there and the locomotives
would be worked on, getting greased and ready for
the first performance," Kimball said. "They let
us run them. We were like little kids, running famous
locomotives like the Lafayette, the John Bull, and
the Tom Thumb." Kimball wanted to go to hear jazz
after the fair closed down for the day. But Walt
insisted on taking long trips on the elevated trains
with him. Kimball: "He'd be looking out the window
and reliving his childhood." After they left the
fair, the two men visited Greenfield Village in
Michigan -- a "museum of buildings" founded by automobile
pioneer Henry Ford. Unrecognized by the crowds,
Walt and Kimball were happy tourists, taking home
movies and enjoying the enormous collection of cottages,
barns, and antique buildings that Ford had assembled
there. Soon after arriving home, Walt wrote a memo
to Dick Kelsey, a production designer at the studio.
According to Broggie, "for the first time, Walt
described a revolutionary idea he called 'Mickey
Mouse Park,'" the first of many concepts that would
ultimately lead to Disneyland." |
In the summer of 1949, Walt, Lilly,
Diane, and Sharon took a memorable trip to Europe,
where he was working on "Treasure Island" -- the
studio's first all-live-action film. They enjoyed
five weeks in England, three weeks in France and
Switzerland, and a few days in Ireland. Diane recalled
one afternoon when Walt returned to their Paris
hotel room, heavy laden with boxes full of little
mechanical toys -- tiny wind-up gadgets of all kinds.
He set them going on the hotel room floor and stared
with the intensity for which he was famous. "Look
at that movement," he said, "with just a simple
mechanism. Look at that." Was he beginning to think
about Audio-Animatronics? It's impossible to know,
of course. But given Walt's famous capacity for
storing away information for years, it's not unlikely.
The family all had a good time, and Walt particularly
enjoyed revisiting some of the locations he had
known when he was in the Red Cross. He even tried
out his not considerable command of the French language
on more than one occasion. |
Walt with his daughters, Sharon
and Diane, and actor Bobby
Driscoll on the set of 'Treasure
Island'.
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