Horse Drawn Streetcar, 1956
I love today's early, strangely washed-out photos of two Horse-drawn Streetcars clip-clopping their way up and down Main Street. Did you know that there are four Streetcars? I'm sure that the ridership is fairly low, but they add so much to Disneyland just by being there. Hopefully they will never go away.
As a rule, I like to sit in front of whatever attraction I'm riding, but the Streetcars get you that much closer to the horse's butt. No, thank you. There's so much to look at along Main Street, even this slow pace doesn't allow enough time to see it all. I definitely need to see Rudolph Valentino and Vilma Banky in "Son of the Sheik".
Hey, there's goes a li'l Surrey! With fringe on top of course. Look at how little those horses are. I could just eat them up. The signs and businesses along Main Street are fun; "Yale and Towne", Swift, Gibson Greeting Cards, and Eastman Kodak.
7 comments:
I love the way these shots capture the "Swift" sign hanging over the streetcar, as if it's describing the sedate, horse-drawn vehicle below.
Beautiful shots (even washed out)of Main Street and the horse drawn vehicles. Sadly the charm and old time detail Walt wanted down Main Street is lost by the crowds of guests walking in the street. Most of these vehicles run at a reduced capacity or not at all these days. Mr Peabody can I borrow your time machine?
Actually, the washed-out-ness of these pictures really lends emphasis on their "olde tyme" feel. This is the way Main Street should look, if it can't be in grainy black and white.
Melissa, back in the old days, those crazy streetcar drivers would sometimes get up to 5 miles an hour!
Alonzo, it makes sense to not run those large vehicles when it is crowded, but I don't like it when they are not there. They're one of those features that says "Disneyland" to me.
Tom, the actual slides are much more washed out, I had to do quite a bit of Photoshop mumbo jumbo to get them looking like this.
Now on to my usual ramblings about clothes! I love the ladies’ “New Look” skirst hanging out the side of the streetcar in Picture #2. The feller in the suspenders and newsie cap behind them looks like he belongs right there on Main St. or is heading off for a shift in Frontierland, but a CM probably wouldn’t be riding the streetcar with the guests, would he?
Then there’s Sergeanr Plaid off to the right, in his sports shirt and Army-style cap. The shot isn’t clear enough to tell if it’s an actual military hat, a souvenir chapeau of some kind, or short-order-cook headgear. Either way, The Littlest Gangster is impressed.
In the distance, just behind the trash can between the two vehicles – is that lady sporting the first babushka of summer, or does her hair just look a bit blue in this lighting?
First picture, third seat back – at first I thought the nice lady just had a newspaper or unfolded map over her head, but it’s one of those folded paper souvenir hats, isn’t it?
"Sergeant Plaid," that is.
I needs me one a them there newfangled proofreaders I been hearing' about, like they got up in the city. Whoo-whee, them city folk with their proofreaders and their cement ponds and their series of tubes!
My father was an extra in the silent movie "Son of the Shiek." He was one of the horsemen! He always said that Miss Banky was very nice to everyone on the set.
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