Disneyland Railroad
| Disneyland Railroad | |
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The attraction poster for the DRR.
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| Disneyland | |
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| Status | Under Refurbishment |
| Opening date | July 17, 1955 |
| General statistics | |
| Attraction type | Railroad attraction |
| Manufacturer | Baldwin Locomotive Works |
| Designer | WED Enterprises |
| Vehicles | 5 steam locomotives |
| Duration | 18:00–20:00 |
| No. of tracks | Single |
| Track gauge | 3 ft (914 mm) |
| Track length | 1.2 miles (1.9 km) |
| Sponsor | Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (1955–1974) |
 Wheelchair accessible |
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 Closed captioning available |
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The Disneyland Railroad (DRR), formerly known as the Santa Fe & Disneyland Railroad, is a 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge heritage railroad and attraction in the Disneyland Resort's Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, California in the United States. Its route is 1.2 miles (1.9 km) in length and encircles the vast majority of the park, with stations in the Main Street, U.S.A., New Orleans Square, Mickey's Toontown, and Tomorrowland sections. The rail line, which was built by WED Enterprises (now Walt Disney Imagineering), is operated with two steam locomotives built by WED Enterprises and three historic steam locomotives originally built by Baldwin Locomotive Works. Its trains take around eighteen minutes to complete a round trip on its main line when three trains are running and twenty minutes when four trains are running. A minimum of two trains and a maximum of four trains are in service daily, and three trains are in service on a typical day.
The Disneyland Railroad opened to the public for the first time on July 17, 1955, the same day that the Disneyland park first opened. The railroad has been consistently billed as one of Disneyland's top attractions, requiring a C ticket to ride when A, B, and C tickets were introduced in autumn 1955, a D ticket to ride when those were introduced in 1956, and an E ticket to ride from the time those were introduced in 1959 until the use of all ride tickets were discontinued in 1982 in favor of a pay-one-price admission system for the park. With an estimated 6.6 million passengers served each year, the DRR has become one of the world's most popular steam-powered railroads.
The DRR temporarily closed on January 11, 2016 to accommodate the construction of Star Wars Land and is scheduled to reopen in summer 2017.
Walt Disney, the creator of the concepts for Disneyland and the Disneyland Railroad, always had a strong fondness for trains. As a young boy, he began to have the desire to become a train engineer like his uncle, Mike Martin, who would tell him stories about his experiences driving main-line trains on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. As a teenager, he obtained a job as a news butcher on the Missouri Pacific Railway, selling various products to train passengers including newspapers, candy, and cigars. Many years later, after co-founding The Walt Disney Company with his older brother Roy O. Disney, he developed an interest in playing polo, but after receiving several injuries including fractured vertebrae, his doctor made a recommendation that he pursue a calmer recreational activity. Starting in late 1947, he began to develop an interest in model trains after purchasing several Lionel train sets.
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