So Cal Railway Museum ! Walt Disney’s Train inspiration #waltdisney #trains

Hi, it's Pat Patterson with the Best of California Award, and I can't believe what I've discovered. You've probably known about it forever, but it's the Southern California Railway Museum here in Paris. And I'm here with Gary Cochran, who's the lead docent at the museum, and grounds. I mean, this place goes on forever. How big is this place, Gary? Nearly 100 acres, totally. Wow. 100 acres. And it has actual trains. So tell me a little bit about how this all got started. Well, the museum is dedicated to Western and Southern California railroading and street cars. So we have a vast collection of both of those. We have- Actual trains. When you said that, the actual trains sitting out there. And we have well over 200 pieces in our total collection. So there's a lot to see when you do come here. So I know the outdoors is open, the gift shop is open. What about the displays inside the museum? That is probably where 70, 75% of our exhibits are, but there's still a lot of things to see on the outside. This is like coming to a park. Correct. We have two beautiful park areas on our property that are open to the public to come and experience, at no charge. They can bring a family and have a picnic and a lot of people do that. In terms of people that come to the museum, is it mostly locals, people from out of town? Do you have any idea who enjoys this place? We're known worldwide and we get more known every year, of course, but I have taken guests around from China, Switzerland, Russia, just about most any place you can think of, we've had people here to tour our facility. And Gary Cochran and I are doing a safe segment and we're in the Grizzly Flats barn. And when I think of Grizzly Flats, I don't know about you, but I think of Disney. Is there a connection, Gary? Actually, I've never had a complete story as to how this name came about. The collection in this building, most of the important parts of the collection were a gift to the museum by a gentleman named Ward Kimball. Mr. Kimball was an animator working with Walt Disney from the early 30s on, before there was the Disney Empire, which made him a fairly wealthy man and he spent a lot of his money on his railroad hobby because he loved railroads. So we are in a collection that he accumulated over 50 years and in 1990 gave it all to our museum. We're now in one of the barns that has the working engines and a lot of the restoration here at the Southern California Railway Museum. So tell me what goes on in this wonderful barn. Well, we store a lot of restored cars in here and we do some minor restoration work in this building also. And it is the storage facility for our working steam engine, our 1922 Baldwin locomotive. And this is the one that comes out on the weekends and people get to ride? The third weekend of every month, except for the hot season. Our ride tickets are all-day tickets and it's $12 for an adult and $8 for children ages 5 through 11. And I assume like any place, any property that has big hobbyists, you've got to have a few railway nerds that show up almost every weekend, right? We have a lot of railway nerds. We used to have that at Disneyland. There's Fred. He's been here every weekend. And besides, you're one. Right. That's great. And are they grateful that you've preserved this history? Oh yes, certainly. We have somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,300 dues-paying members on our rolls. And we have members from all over the world. And we're at the Descanso car, Gary, you told me about out front. This is the funeral car and this dates from when? From 1909 and it stayed in service until about 1923-24. The casket rides in the front and the car has a capacity for about 25 to 30 people. So this would be the family car. Yes, and this basically is a hearse to take people from the funeral home or a private home to the cemetery like a hearse does. It's so important, this is my personal opinion, but it's so important that we still have Amtrak and we still have this government run rail service so that we can still use it. And it might likely all come back as we learn from all the greenhouse gas and climate change that we need more efficient public transportation. And of course all of us rail fans would love to see that happen. But I don't know, people are pretty used to it and really enjoy getting from point A to point B in a very short time on an airplane.