Walt Disney fell in love as a teen

Garden trains encounter some of the same challenges as big trains: loose wheels, landslides, floods, erosion, snow on the tracks.

But garden railroaders have a couple of unbeatable role models -- the Little Engine That Could, for one. The other: Walt Disney, one of model railroading's most famous enthusiasts.

Disney had loved his teenage job of selling candy on a train. As movie studio boss, he ran a table-top train to take his mind off work.

Indoor-size trains carried him to the next level of model railroading -- a miniature steam train at home on Carolwood Drive in Los Angeles.

Disney's half-mile backyard layout, the Carolwood Pacific Railroad, was big enough to ride. He wore an engineer's cap to run the peddle-car size steam locomotive, Lilly Belle, named for his wife, Lillian. His two daughters and their childhood friends, and sometimes his movie cartoonist friends, rode by the carload.

When Disneyland opened, in 1955, he made sure to have a real steam train that circled the park, and trains ever since, with passenger cars for all ages.

"Adults," he said, "are only kids grown up."

HomeStyle on 05/16/2015

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