In the early years of this century, great steam-belching, bell-clanging locomotives blazed across the open plains of the Southwest, promising glory on the rails to every schoolboy who stood waving alongside the tracks. The music of those fabled "iron horses," their whistle blasts, the far-off clickety-clack of their wheels, lives on today mostly in memory and song – and at Disneyland and Walt Disney World.
Those trains of yesteryear so inspired the young Walt Disney that he decided to capture their magic for all time in his parks – not as some dusty exhibit of faded relics, but as living, smoke-snorting engines that whisk visitors through backwoods rivers, past frontier settlements, and on into mountains and wild bear country. The 1 1/2-mile train trips are a natural outgrowth of Disney's lifelong romance with the rails.
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