At the shipyard, Broggie and Vilmer met George Britton, the machinists’ boss. “The first thing I told them was that I didn’t know the first thing about railroad engines,” Britton, 68, says. “But I also told them I was willing to learn.”
And learn he did. The temporary job became permanent with Disney; Britton was Disney World’s roundhouse foreman from three months before the park opened on Oct. 1, 1971, until his retirement June 6, 2006.
Britton had a huge job in rebuilding the engines. The tenders were nothing more than rust buckets; the only salvageable material was their trucks. The engines fared little better; they were torn down to their frames and everything had to be remachined or replaced. Dixon Boiler Works of Los Angeles supplied the boilers. The park’s fiberglass shop crafted cabs from a carbon-resin material to replace the wornout wood-and-steel ones. Original domes, bells and other accessories were used, and the fireboxes were modified to burn low-sulfur reformulated diesel oil No. 2. New pistons had to be hand-lapped to fit old cylinders. All of the brass had to shine like the sun, without scratches or blemishes.
“If we found a problem, we redid it,” Britton says. “That’s the way it had to be. The locomotives had to look beautiful as well as function perfectly. And that’s still the way it is today.”
Broggie, Vilmer, Britton, and a fivemember crew produced four Magic Kingdom trains two years ahead of schedule and under budget. No. 274 became Walt Disney World Railroad No. 1, the Walter E. Disney; the other Ten-Wheeler became No. 3, the Roger E. Broggie. Mogul No. 260 became No. 2, the Lilly Belle, named in honor of Walt’s wife, Lillian Disney; and American 251 became No. 4, named Roy O. Disney after Walt’s brother and business partner.
The locomotives were dolled up in bright colors with red drivers. No. 1 was given a red cab and boiler; No. 2 a green cab and boiler; No. 3 a red cab and green boiler; and No. 4 a green cab and red boiler.
Twenty open-sided “excursion cars” were built for the locomotives and arranged into four matched sets also stunningly adorned — 101-105 (red), 201-205 (green), 301-305 (yellow), and 401-405 (blue). Stung by the original enclosed coaches in California being difficult to load and unload through end doors, Disney’s people gave the new coaches rows of varnished fullwidth benches so passengers could enter or exit from the right side of the train.
Crews built a loop of track — 7,809 feet, to be exact — around the Magic Kingdom and began running all trains in a clockwise direction so no sidings were necessary. When the park opened, Main Street Station, said to be a replica of one at Saratoga Springs, N.Y., was the only stop, with passengers making the complete trip in 20 minutes. Today, trains also call at Frontierland and Mickey’s Toontown Fair. Thus the trains are functional, moving passengers from one crowded area of the park to another.
