How Disneyland Lost its Railroad Sponsor

That story about how Walt's father was a man of the railroad, telling legends and folktale along this classic and romantic way of transportation, really made me understand Walt Disney's ideals a lot more, and why he saw his people's history the way he did.

For the first few minutes I was convinced I was watching a Defunctland video 😂

Peter Dibble? Trains? More Disneyland?? Am I dreaming?? What a way to start the day.

The irony is the southwest chief is still running from LA to Chicago, but its biggest enemy is freight trains causing it delays. also, Disneyland is so expensive that now that I have discovered how much I love the Chief, i'm not sure when I will be back to properly appreciate Walt's homage to a line I have come to love as much as i did trips to Disneyland as a kid.

I work on restoring a steam engine that Walt often road in. The former Santa Maria Valley #21, Walt was there for its last run in 1962. The name of our nonprofit is the Astoria Railroad Preservation Association. This was a great story!

I literally cried my eyes out when I heared Bing Crosby's song!😅😍🥰 THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THAT!!!❤❤❤

The AeroTrain also inspired the Zooliner at the Oregon Zoo. Would love to see a video on the history of the zoo railway. Peter, you of course are the only one who can make it happen.

Oh wow, this was great! And as soon as that first clip of the Super Chief dining car came up, I thought, "I wonder if this was sourced from 'Great Railway Journeys of the World'". So glad you used that footage (including the "modern era" freight cars in Chicago.) I loved that series growing up, and it's so fun to see it pop up again here. Keep making awesome video, Peter!

Speaking of sponsorships, Art Linkletter, seen in this video chatting with Walt Disney and Gov. Knight on the station platform, was asked by Walt Disney to emcee the opening ceremonies for Disneyland. Walt was concerned that due to the cost overruns and other financial issues, he couldn’t really afford to pay Art much. Art agreed to host the ceremonies and television coverage for union scale, which at the time, would be around $200. In exchange, he asked for the photographic concessions for ten years. Art would pay the regular concession fee and he would keep the profits on all Kodak camera and film sales within the park. That ten year concession contract became the most lucrative in television at the time; a record that stood for many years. In an interview, Art Linkletter said that his biggest regret was not buying real estate in Orange County.

Thank you for this video, Peter. You created a documentary masterpiece with this one. I felt sad to see the Santa Fe logos come down from Disneyland in 1974. I was only 14 then and had been going to Disneyland almost every year since I was 2. My family lived in Tustin, just 15 minutes away from Disneyland. Tustin was also no stanger to the Santa Fe, having both the railway’s San Diegan mainline passing through the southwest side of town as well as its freight spur off that mainline serving Tustin’s and Irvine’s Sunkist packing houses. It was called the "Venta Spur" — hence, the name of my YouTube channel. For all the aforementioned reasons, I have always loved the Santa Fe railway. Its red, yellow and silver "Warbonnet" livery on passenger diesels stood out as perhaps the most iconic, attractive and recognizable paint scheme among all passenger railroads in America at the time. The distinctive Warbonnet design dominated model train locomotives, too, inspiring generations of hobby enthusiasts like me. From my recollection of model train sets on sale every Christmas season during the 1960s and 70s, I observed that model trains bearing Santa Fe’s distinctive design and colors were more often advertised and sold than those of any other competitor railroad modeled — an enduring testimony to Santa Fe’s popular livery indeed. Now I model the Santa Fe railway in 1:160th scale — called N scale by model railroaders. Although Santa Fe’s logos and liveries vanished decades ago from the American scene, their legacy lives on through modelers like me and many, many others. —Thomas Lincoln Pilling

Really well done doc Peter.. I can remember riding on the SF&D as a kid!

And BNSF was acquired by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway...who has investments in Disney.

Any day is a good day when Peter drops a new video!!

And right next to the Disney Museum in his hometown of Marceline, Missouri is a Santa Fe SD40 diesel locomotive now sitting on display.

9:45 fun fact I met Bob Gurr just recently! He’s an awesome Disney imagineer!

Documentary levels of quality. Thank you

Peter dibble + Trains = Cool stuff

Very impressive work again Peter, thank you so much for sharing your one of your talents with us.

The little Indian boy in front of the sign for the Grand Canyon opening ceremony was a character that Santa Fe used on its printed public timetables at the time. On the timetables, the boy was drawing the Santa Fe logo in the sand in the same stance as shown here at 11:33.

Another amazing and underrated video by Peter