Wildlife Express
For most of Disney’s Animal Kingdom guests, Wildlife Express to Rafiki’s Planet
Watch is a novel way to travel by rail behind the scenes. It runs from the
African village of Harambe past state-of-the-art animal care facilities to
Rafiki’s Planet Watch, an interactive, fun-filled center of activity focusing
on animals worldwide
But for railroad buffs, the puffing steam engines and their open-air carriages
provide a nostalgic adventure extending the legends of British railroading in
the mountains and jungles of far-off colonies
Engines like these were first produced by British boiler works 150 years ago.
For nearly 100 years they were shipped to places like South Africa, Rhodesia or
India carrying European explorers and the native population to the animal
lands, mines and agricultural areas of the two continents
The model for the new Disney engines, discovered in the archives of the Indian
Peninsula Railroad, features an unusual Aspinwall side-tank 2-4-2 design first
built in 1898 in England’s Horwich Locomotive Works. Its passenger carriages
are partly enclosed by waist-high, wood-louvered shutters with carpet bags,
boxes, crates and wicker luggage stacked high on its weathered rooftops --
definitely an “Out of India” theme
The Express travels a 1.2-mile circle-tour route built in narrow-gauge (3.3-foot
rail width) to fit the scale of its Disney’s Animal Kingdom surroundings. The
smaller scale was used in many remote areas where narrow-gauge was easier to
build along canyon walls and around horseshoe bends.
Three engines and two sets of cars were built in 1997 only a few miles from
William Shakespeare’s cottage in Stratford-on-Avon by the model-railroad firm
of Severn Lamb, Ltd., at Alchester, England. The company makes trains, large
and small, for parks throughout the United Kingdom and Europe, including one
for Disneyland Paris. Each five-car train seats 250 passengers on contoured
benches facing sideways
The stubby-looking locomotives -- engine and tender all in one -- look very
different from the Magic Kingdom American-style engines with their bells and
low-moaning B&O whistles. Wildlife Express whistles sound like the scream
of a wounded piccolo. You’ll recognize them right away from a dozen British
mystery movies
The classic depot is patterned after stucco structures with archways surrounding
an open-air waiting area built by the British in East Africa during the early
1900s and complete with colorful travel posters on the walls and a
corrugated-metal water tank nearby. Next to formal, wrought-iron railings is a
“local addition” made of thatch-and-pole construction
The train makes its way down a shallow valley between Africa and Asia for a
behind-the-scenes look at ultra-modern animal care facilities which provide
nighttime shelters for lions, elephants, warthogs and antelope herds. All of
these animals and many more spend their days in the forests and grasslands of
Africa along the route of Kilimanjaro Safaris
At Rafiki’s Planet Watch, guests enjoy up-close encounters with small animals,
interactive video linking animal researchers and information sources around the
world, and a complete veterinary hospital with medical procedures in progress.
Television screens provide intimate views of animals during feeding, health
care and other daily activities within backstage animal care facilities and at
locations in the Africa and Asia animal lands
Supervising design and construction of the trains for Walt Disney Imagineering
were Joel Fritsche, technical director of mechanical engineering, and veteran
Disney train-maker Bob Harpur, who came out of retirement to help with the
project
Harpur ran a model train factory before joining Disney in 1966 to help locate
and rebuild antique trains from Mexico for Magic Kingdom and Disney’s Fort
Wilderness Resort and Campground in Florida. The Wildlife Express job involved
overseeing tracklayers on site, traveling to England to check on construction
of three engines and 10 carriages, and directing final theming and “weathering”
by Disney experts at the Walt Disney World site
Although some of the 19th century trains may be still operating with makeshift
repairs and unreliable schedules in isolated areas of the world, the last of
the vintage steam trains in England retired nearly 50 years ago, relegated to
places like the National Railway Museum in Yorkshire. None will ever again
carry as many passengers as the Wildlife Express will carry at Disney’s Animal
Kingdom
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