Once upon a time, a imaginative man named Walter Elias Disney had a dream. Unlike most men, Walter Elias Disney had the magic touch that makes all things possible. On July 18, 1955, a 160-acre site that the Spanish grandees of old knew as the Rancho San Jaun Cajon de Santa Ana was officially opened as Disneyland and the dream became a reality.
Fortunately for model realroaders, the dream's originator was and is one of the best known and most dedicated railroading enthusiasts in the world. His interests range from miniature scale equipment to the live streamer that rumbles around the half mile track that winds through his Holmby Hills estate and into the canyon it overlooks. With such a start, it’s not strange that one of the elements of his dreame-come-true is a train that rolls along a 15-foot high beam that separates the harsh realities of today from the world of yesterday, tomorrow and never-never. That train is invariably the focal point of interest for every man who has ever given a passing thought to building a pike of his own.
To begin with, every problem that ever confronted a model railroader had to be contended with on a staggering scale. Not the least of these problems was that of creating a landscape full of valleys, hills, rivers, roads and other details from a sandy flatness without the assistance of open grid construction. This involved moving some 350,000 cubic yards of soil and laying two million feet of paving, a prospect likely to stun the imagination of even the most avid brass head. […]
