Walt Disney's Carolwood Barn

Walt Disney's Carolwood Barn is a museum located at the Los Angeles Live Steamers complex in Griffith Park. It is a miniature barn used by Walt Disney as a machine shop while operating his miniature "live steam" Carolwood Pacific Railroad layout in the backyard of his home in Holmby Hills, a district of Los Angeles, California, USA.

Walt Disney's Carolwood Barn in Griffith Park.

The barn is currently open the third Sunday of every month from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm. Admission is free, but donations are welcome. The barn is owned by The Walt Disney Family Foundation and operated by the Carolwood Pacific Historical Society and the Carolwood Foundation.

History

Barn beginnings

Walt Disney vividly remembered having a barn on his family's farm in Marceline, Missouri. As a child, Walt would play in the barn. One of his very first attempts at entertainment was putting on a barnyard circus for his friends in the barn. However, the farm animals did not want to participate in his show and Walt's mother made him give back all the money he had "earned". The barn was always a source of magic and wonder to Walt.

Carolwood

Walt Disney and Ward Kimball, one of his animators, attended the Chicago Railroad Fair in 1948. The journey rekindled Walt's fascination with steam locomotives and he returned to California with ideas for a live-steam garden railroad layout. The Disneys purchased a five-acre site in Holmby Hills (just north of Beverly Hills) with landscaping room in mind for his wife Lillian's flower gardens and the trestles and tunnels which Walt fancied. To retain the reporting marks of the live-steam miniature locomotive reproduction of Central Pacific Railroad No. 173 he named his railway the Carolwood Pacific Railroad, a convenient coincidence of their address - 355 North Carolwood Drive.

That year Walt produced So Dear to My Heart, a film scripted in a rural farm setting. To accurately re-create a barn for the film, Walt assisted set designers with recollections of the barn in Marceline, MO on the family farm of his childhood. An old-fashioned railroad station replica facade built for the film was given to Ward Kimball who 'fleshed-it-out' to serve as the depot of his Grizzly Flats Railroad full-scale narrow-gauge line and house his extensive model and toy train collection. Facilitated by the plans drawn up for the film's barn and his own Marceline recollections, Walt reproduced the barn at home in miniature, central to the track layout as a roundhouse, train-shed and machine-shop.

As a way to relieve the stress of being a studio-head, Walt would wake early before breakfast and head down to the barn to arrange his day and thoughts. Walt eased the "train-widow" tension of neglect caused by his new hobby by dedicating the engine in Lillian's honor - the Lilly Belle. The Carolwood barn is considered the "Birthplace of Imagineering" because after work, supper and on until late in the evening Walt would return to planning and dreaming while tinkering and improving his steam engine, rolling stock, and projects which would flesh-out to become Disneyland.

Birthplace of imagineering

Walt's barn is billed as "The birthplace of Imagineering". It was in the barn, with his trains, that Walt got one of the very first inspirations for what would eventually be called Disneyland. In its earliest planning stages he envisioned a park that was surrounded by a miniature train - today the Disneyland Railroad is a full-scale narrow-gauge railway with five passenger trains hauled by four live-steam locomotives improved from the original two locomotives and trains circling the perimeter of the park which continues to operate daily since its 1955 opening.

Roger E. Broggie, the head of the Walt Disney Studio machine shop at the time, helped Walt assemble the Lilly Belle, as well as the rest of his Carolwood Pacific railway and rolling stock. Roger is known as the "first Imagineer", as he aided Walt in transitioning into three-dimensional entertainment. Roger would also help Walt assemble the trains for Disneyland, among other contributions to the planning of the park.

While planning and operating Disneyland, Walt had less time to enjoy his trains. His visits to the barn became less frequent over time, but the barn still stood there.

After Walt Disney

After Walt Disney died on December 15, 1966, Lillian Disney enjoyed keeping up the gardens and decorations while she lived alone in their Carolwood home. However, several years later she sought out a fitting place where Walt's backyard railroad could be properly maintained and enjoyed, and decided to donate Walt's hand-laid train tracks, switches, and crossing to the Los Angeles Live Steamers, a group of steam train enthusiasts in which Walt had been a charter member and who maintained a museum with an extensive layout in Griffith Park. Volunteers removed the aluminum rail, along with their associated redwood sleepers with scale miniature spikes, and utilized them to create a new route nestled south against the hillside known today as "The Disney Loop" and tunnel. Walt's original Carolwood track sections then became the popular mainline, and over the course of many years of wear much of his home trackage has been removed and replaced with more durable steel screwed to recycled plastic-composite heavy-duty sleepers. Several hundred feet were recovered and stored beside the barn, then stored off-property. Small display samples have been recently offered to collectors.

Renewed Vibrancy

After Lillian Disney died in December 1997 her surviving family sold the house to initiate funding of the Walt Disney Family Foundation, the precursor of The Walt Disney Family Museum as well as Walt's Barn. Gabriel Brener, the new owner, planned to level the original landscaping as he was forced by asbestos concerns to raze the Disney house. Brener managed to save the S-curved train tunnel and Mickey-Mouse-shaped drive-in gate - part of his attraction to the property grew from his respect for Walt Disney.

Diane Disney Miller, Walt's eldest daughter, asked Brener if she could save from the wrecker's ball an historic structure of the family lot - Walt's barn. Brener agreed, and in late 1998 Diane arranged for volunteers to dismantle and remove the barn from the Carolwood property, piece by carefully labeled piece. The Walt Disney Family Foundation was able to negotiate the creation of an enclave within an enclave to accommodate public viewing of the barn as a museum protected within the grounds of the Los Angeles Live Steamers. Because of Walt's history with, generosity toward and legacy as a LALS founding member the club is proud to host it.

The dedication plaque that stands outside the Barn.

Morgan "Bill" Evans, the man who landscaped most of the original Disneyland and the Disneys' Carolwood backyard, donated his expertise to landscape the area around the barn's new home to match its original location and orientation in Holmby Hills, including the three weeping sycamores transplanted from the family lot. Then the barn "jigsaw puzzle" was carefully and faithfully rebuilt on its new concrete foundation with the aid of many exacting volunteers. All of the barn as it now stands was as the original barn once stood (excepting 20% of the wood - the split-cedar-shake roof was reconstructed with fireproof shingles.)

On July 19, 1999, Diane Disney Miller dedicated the barn as a new place to learn more about her father. At the ceremony, she stated, "Our heart and heritage is here, in this place". Also on hand for the dedication were Steve Soboroff, Los Angeles Parks and Recreation Commissioner, and L.A. City Councilman Tom LaBonge.

Collection and displays

The Barn has an extensive collection of Disney and steam-train-related memorabilia. The collection includes:

Walt's track switchboard.

Special guests

The Barn has had many special guests make appearances; mainly Disney Legends who meet with fans and talk about their experiences with Walt Disney. Such notable people have included Bobby Burgess, Margaret Kerry (the live-action model for Tinker Bell), Floyd Norman and Imagineers Tony Baxter, Rolly Crump, and Alice Davis.

See also

Sources

External links