Wildlife Express Train
| Wildlife Express Train | |
|---|---|
Wildlife Express Locomotive
|
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| Disney's Animal Kingdom | |
| Area | Africa Rafiki's Planet Watch |
| Coordinates | 28°21′35″N 81°35′28″W / 28.35972°N 81.59111°WCoordinates: 28°21′35″N 81°35′28″W / 28.35972°N 81.59111°W |
| Status | Operating |
| Soft opening date | April 21, 1998 |
| Opening date | April 22, 1998 |
| General statistics | |
| Attraction type | Train |
| Manufacturer | Severn Lamb |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering |
| Duration | 12:00 |
| Track gauge | 3 ft (914 mm) |
 Wheelchair accessible |
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The Wildlife Express Train is a short railway that takes guests at Disney's Animal Kingdom from Harambe Station in the Africa section to Conservation Station in the Rafiki's Planet Watch section. During the ride, portions of the Animal Kingdom backlot can be seen, including animal holding buildings for rhinos and elephants, among other animals as well as the roundhouse where the trains are stored. It takes about seven minutes to go from Harambe Station to Conservation Station and an additional five minutes to return. The railway is built to a 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge, which is smaller than the 1,000 mm (3 ft 3 3⁄8 in) metre gauge currently used on East African railways. The full journey is a 1.2-mile (1.9 km) round trip.
The railway is part of the fictional Eastern Star Railway, running from Lusaka to Nairobi and Kisangani.
The railway uses three diesel-hydraulic steam outline locomotives built by Severn Lamb of Stratford-upon-Avon, United Kingdom in 1997 before the park's opening the following year. The locomotives are all a different color: one red, one green, and one black . They have a wheel arrangement of 2-4-2T and are based on the L&YR Class 5 locomotives designed by John Aspinall for the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway in England in 1898 at Horwich Works in Horwich. The builder's plates of the locomotives, however, tell a different story, stating that the locomotives were built in 1926 by Beyer Peacock of Gorton Foundry in Manchester. Their numbers are 02594, 04982, and 00174 with the former being named, R. Baba Harpoor, in honor of Imagineer Bob Harpur.
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