| Fort Wilderness Railroad | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|||||||||
| General Statistics | |||||||||
| Attraction Type | Railroad | ||||||||
| Designer | WED Enterprises | ||||||||
| Length | 13,200 ft (4,000 m) | ||||||||
| Vehicle type | Steam locomotive | ||||||||
| Riders per vehicle | 50 | ||||||||
The Fort Wilderness Railroad was a 2.5–3.5-mile (4.0–5.6 km) steam-powered railway that opened in 1973 to provide transportation around the various campsites at Disney's Fort Wilderness Resort and Campground. It also provided transportation around the resort grounds to campers and guests visiting the nearby River Country water park. Because of issues with track maintenance, pedestrian safety, and noise concerns, the railroad only operated occasionally after 1977, and closed permanently in the early 1980s. Some sections of track remain in place along the outer areas of the campground.
The major difference between the Fort Wilderness Railroad and the Walt Disney World Railroad in the nearby Magic Kingdom is size; the Fort Wilderness Railroad is built to 4⁄5 scale with a 30" gauge track, compared to the full size 36" gauge track at the Magic Kingdom.
The Fort Wilderness Railroad utilized four replica steam locomotives and twenty coaches built by Walt Disney Imagineering. After the railroad was closed, the locomotives were stored for several years, and are today privately owned. Several of the coaches are also still in existence, used as ticket booths at Typhoon Lagoon and Pleasure Island at Downtown Disney.
Read more about this topic: Disney's Fort Wilderness Resort And Campground
Famous quotes containing the words fort, wilderness and/or railroad:
“So here they are, the dog-faced soldiers, the regulars, the fifty-cents-a-day professionals riding the outposts of the nation, from Fort Reno to Fort Apache, from Sheridan to Stark. They were all the same. Men in dirty-shirt blue and only a cold page in the history books to mark their passing. But wherever they rode and whatever they fought for, that place became the United States.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)
“There were ghosts that returned to earth to hear his phrases,
As he sat there reading, aloud, the great blue tabulae.
They were those from the wilderness of stars that had expected more.
There were those that returned to hear him read from the poem of life,
Of the pans above the stove, the pots on the table, the tulips among them.
They were those that would have wept to step barefoot into reality....”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Though the railroad and the telegraph have been established on the shores of Maine, the Indian still looks out from her interior mountains over all these to the sea.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)