The creator of Mickey Mouse and other immortal cartoon characters, enjoys the hobby of electric trains, a hobby that first captured his interest forty-two years ago.
With exclusive sketches for "Electric Trains" by Walt Disney Productions.
EVER hear of the Carolwood Pacific Railroad? She's an out of this world, half-pint line that has carried some quite famous people. Its only locomotive, the "Lilly Belle, runs on a half mile of track that is called "The Fair Weather Route."
The C.P.R.R. loses money on every run.
Yet on most any warm Saturday afternoon you can hear its silver- toned whistle in the rolling Holmby Hills, not far from Hollywood. The tiny train hurries through tunnels and across trestles with smoke belching from its stack like fire from the mouth of a miniature dragon.
Lilly Belle is the first of a number of locos that will soon run on the estate of a man who is satisfying a Missouri farm boy's craving for an electric train a craving that started 42 years ago. Oddly, the railroad's chief grease monkey, builder and engineer is best known as an artist. He is Walter Elias Disney.
Walt is a leader among the artists whose imaginations have been captured by the romance of miniature railroading. And more practically, the creator of Mickey Mouse considers work on his colorful train a necessary change of pace -an escape from the pressures of a work- aday world.
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