Walt Disney World Railroad

Walt Disney World Railroad
The No. 2 Lilly Belle locomotive stopped at Fantasyland Station in Magic Kingdom.
Magic Kingdom
Coordinates	28°24′59″N 81°34′52″W / 28.4163896°N 81.5811922°W / 28.4163896; -81.5811922 (Main Street, U.S.A. Station) (Main Street, U.S.A. Station) 28°25′11″N 81°35′06″W / 28.4196350°N 81.5851371°W / 28.4196350; -81.5851371 (Frontierland Station) (Frontierland Station) 28°25′16″N 81°34′42″W / 28.4211279°N 81.5782691°W / 28.4211279; -81.5782691 (Fantasyland Station) (Fantasyland Station)
Status	Operating
Opening date	October 1, 1971
General statistics
Attraction type	Railroad attraction
Manufacturer	Baldwin Locomotive Works
Designer	Retlaw Enterprises
Vehicles	4 steam locomotives 20 passenger cars
Riders per vehicle	375 per train
Duration	About 20:00
No. of tracks	Single
Track gauge	3 ft (914 mm)
Track length	1.5 miles (2.4 km)
Wheelchair accessible
Closed captioning available

The Walt Disney World Railroad (WDWRR) is a 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge heritage railroad and attraction in the Walt Disney World Resort's Magic Kingdom theme park in Bay Lake, Florida in the United States. Its route is 1.5 miles (2.4 km) in length and encircles the vast majority of the park, with stations in the Main Street, U.S.A., Frontierland, and Fantasyland sections. The rail line, which was built by Retlaw Enterprises (now Walt Disney Imagineering), is operated with four historic steam locomotives originally built by Baldwin Locomotive Works. Each of the four locomotives pulls a set of five passenger cars with seating capacity for 75 passengers per car, for a total of 375 passengers per train.

The Walt Disney World Railroad opened to the public for the first time on October 1, 1971, the same day that the Magic Kingdom park first opened. Since then the WDWRR has become one of the world's most popular steam-powered railroads, with 3.7 million passengers served each year.

The development of the Walt Disney World Railroad from the late 1960s to its opening in 1971 was overseen by Mapo, Inc. (the Retlaw Enterprises research and manufacturing branch) Vice President and General Manager Roger E. Broggie, who previously supervised the building of the Disneyland Railroad in Disneyland in Anaheim, California, the sister park of the Magic Kingdom. From his experience with the railroad at Disneyland, Broggie determined that the best option in terms of what type of steam locomotives to use would be already-existing ones, as opposed to building them entirely from scratch like the Disneyland Railroad's first two locomotives. To this end, he contacted rail historian Gerald M. Best who informed him of a possible location where these types of locomotives could be obtained.

The location was a railroad boneyard in Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico owned by the Ferrocarriles Unidos de Yucatán, a 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge system (the same gauge as the Disneyland Railroad). Broggie, along with fellow Disney employee and railroad-building expert Earl Vilmer, ventured down to Mérida in 1969 to investigate and determined that four locomotives (all built by Baldwin Locomotive Works) in the boneyard, along with a fifth locomotive (built by Pittsburgh Locomotive and Car Works) in a park in front of the railroad company's headquarters across the street, could potentially be salvaged.