Peoplemover Views, April 1969
Photos taken from the Peoplemover aren't quite as common as photos taken from the Skyway, but I have two interesting examples for you today. Both were taken by Fun Dad.
First up is this interesting view of Monorail tracks, with the Disneyland Railroad passing below, and the famous Roundhouse to our left. An unusual photo, without a doubt! Another interesting thing is the fact that the American Flag is at half staff, and I wondered why. After a bit of Googling, I found out that Dwight D. Eisenhower (President #34) died on March 28th, 1969. I think it is pretty likely that the flag was lowered in his honor.
Here's a crop-in for a slightly better look at the Roundhouse.
Meanwhile, in Tomorrowland proper... we get this nice look at the tri-level mini-hub where one would find the Space Bar, the Peoplemover load area, and the Rocket Jets. What an ambitious and impressive feature!
Down below we can barely see one of the lozenge-shaped dioramas from Goodyear (to the extreme left).
22 comments:
Major-
Leave it to 'Fun Dad' to grab an unusual angle. I guess the flag pole is at the Motor Boat Cruise-??
Thanks, Major.
I love those Goodyear lozenges! One day, we are going to see a close-up view of one or more of them (I hope). I wonder if Disney or Goodyear, themselves, took photos to document them.
Behind the counter of the Space Bar, we can see one of the bubble machines (or whatever those drink dispensers are called) that held that wonderful beverage, Space Mist!
It’s interesting that while there are guests on the PeopleMover loading platform ..... I don’t see a single PeopleMover car IN ,ENTERING or DEPARTING the station ??
Mike I was going to comment the exact same thing. Where are they??
Besides the missing PEOPLEMOVER cars , the Rocket Jets are in operation - with NO visable guests in any of the Rockets! There are two single guests standing on the deck - and two cast members near the control console....something is up!!
The perspective on that curved track is awesome; talk about your sense of motion in a still picture!
Bubble Mist and Goodyear lozenges....it's what's for dinner.
These are some swell photos that have oodles of details. So busy, so much going on in each. I think I like these types of photos best as you can stare at them and keep finding something new.
Thanks for posting. Well done fun dad (wherever you are) and Major.
Excuse me, Space Mist (drawn from a bubble), duh.
Every time I rode the Disneyland Railroad and passed through this part of the "Grand Circle Tour" it never failed that I'd always glance over to peak at the backstage area containing the roundhouse. It always intrigued me as to what wonderful things were hidden back there. Great pics today! Thanks, Major.
I'm thinking the flagpole is at the sub drydock.
Thanks for the great photos! Wow, that roundhouse photo is superb! Looking at the various monorail sidings leading into and around the roundhouse, is the monorail train visible in the photo sitting just behind a section of the track that would move (a 'switch'), thus giving the train access to several sidings? Is there a photo that might show this mechanism? Since there's not a traditional 'turntable' visible, I wonder if this type of 'wye' switch was used.
Did the downstairs of the same roundhouse, house the Disneyland RR? Was the Peoplemover housed in that roundhouse, as well?
The tri-level photo shows, once again, those mysterious covered spotlights...mysterons? The hazy skies make the reds and greens really pop!
Two driveway poles in front of the roundhouse got a candy cane striping, just to make this the Happiest Backstage Area on Earth. Around the trains here was a favorite bizarre sight, a large rock blowing air onto the long grasses. It was years before I figured out that diesel fumes from the Submarine caverns were being vented, in clever disguise.
Agreeing with Alonzo today, fun to study the details in these photos. I'll buy a round of Space Mist for the house while we go through them.
@Stefano, I often thought that powering the submarines with diesel engines, while authentic in a way, was a potentially risky thing, what with the show building and all the guests in a closed environment, etc.
Of course, underground parking garages have a lot of ventilation and mishaps are few and far between there too. I wonder what provisions were made for exiting the subs in the event of a breakdown? I've never experienced a sub breakdown, maybe they were reliable devices, but there must be a plan and a method.
@Mike Cozart, any story on emergency exiting of the sub show building etc? Photos of the interior backstage area here are few and hard to find.
Agreeing with the earlier Anonymous, the flagpole is near the entrance to the Disneyland Navy Yard, off the driveway east of IASW.
Thank you, Major.
JG
Fun Dad. Who was he? What kinda camera did he use? When he wasn't photographing Disneyland, what did he do? Very mysterious. But we lucked out and can enjoy the fruits of his labor many moons later. A coincidence? I think not. Major P. reached into the cosmic conscience (he is tuned in) and these slides just find their way to him. Spooky. How does Major do it? He's not talking. Any who, I will just sit here and swill coffee, and marvel at the wonders Fun Dad documented. Thanks Major for sharing with us.
My hometown, Denison Tx, is Eisenhower's birthplace. I still lived there in '69. That's all I got.
Odd to see no Peoplemover cars on the tracks. Quite baffling to me. I don't recall one-way trips being offered back then. :)
I started as a CM during that very time. Nearly 50 years ago now. Yikes! KS
"Fun Dad. Who was he? What kinda camera did he use? When he wasn't photographing Disneyland, what did he do?"
Where did he come from? Where was he going? What color was his parachute? Who moved his cheese? Did he ever become Fun Grandpa?
Nanook, I was thinking the flagpole must be backstage somewhere, but I don’t really know where.
TokyoMagic!, I feel like I have seen a few good photos of those little dioramas, but maybe it’s just my imagination. I sure hope there is some documentation out there. I noticed that drink machine!
Mike Cozart, it is very weird that there are that many guests on the Peoplemover platform, but… no Peoplemover trains.
Scott Lane, maybe they were shrunk down by the Mighty Microscope?
Mike Cozart, it’s like a Twilight Zone version of Disneyland!
Melissa, that picture gives me the sense that I am about to fall over.
Alonzo, it’s funny how anything different gets me so interested - and today’s images (especially that first one) are different enough.
Alonzo, Bubble Mist is probably delicious too.
K. Martinez, you were smarter than I was, I don’t remember EVER looking over toward the Roundhouse. I was probably distracted by whatever they actually wanted you to look at.
Anon, thanks!
Clyde Hughes, I don’t know if that part of the Monorail track would move… I need somebody better informed (Steve DeGaetano?) to chime in. And yes, the lower portion of the Roundhouse is where the trains were serviced. Personally I wish the sky was nice and blue, but I have to take what I can get.
Stefano, I never even thought about it, but of course they would need to vent those diesel fumes from the subs. Sounds like they had some powerful fans to take care of it.
JG, I agree, an enclosed building is not the best place to run engines that produce toxic fumes. I think (but am not positive) that a sub that broke down was somehow towed back to the dock by some smaller vehicle. If anybody knows, I’d love to hear.
Jonathan, Fun Dad is like Vermeer… not much is known about him, but his influence lives on in our lives. He married Fun Mom and had lots of kids, but that’s all we know. I wish the slides had “found” me… I paid for ‘em with cold hard cash!
stu29573, I didn’t know Ike was Texan!
KS, perhaps it was just a slow day and they had very few Peoplemover trains on the tracks, meaning that they were spaced apart by a lot?
Melissa, you have asked all of the important questions!
"Who moved his cheese?" I remember that from a 90's management(?) seminar! Thanks Melissa.
Thanks also to Fun Dad and (of course) to The Major Himself
I've been to the WDW roundhouse as part of the "Behind the Steam Trains" tour. It's the same design, with monorails on the upper level and steam on the ground. I figured Disneyland's wouldn't have both in the same building, since the trains preceded the monorails there, while both were installed at the same time in Florida.
Answering Clyde H's question, yes, that's a monorail "switch" just ahead of Monorail Red in that photo. The mechanism that slid it from one branch to the other is partly obscured by the tree at center; the mobile section of track moved along that wide-topped pylon to create a path,
Adding to Dean Finder's comment above, there are actually two moveable sections of monorail beamway in front of the Disneyland roundhouse. The first switches between the spur to the main line and the siding to the stall on the extreme left in this photo. The other, closer to the roundhouse, switches between the other three stalls. You can get a good idea of the layout at this link.
I believe this odd layout was designed to reuse as much existing monorail beamway as possible when they built the combined roundhouse in 1965-66. The previous monorail shed, located to the left of where it's a small world now stands, had three stalls and a three-way switch (see extreme left of this 1961 GDB photo. It was a separate facility from the SF&DL RR roundhouse, which was located at the northwest corner of the Park. The current facility was built at the same time as iasw and the realignment of the northernmost part of the SF&DL RR right-of-way.
From 1959-61 there was an earlier, two-stall shed parallelling the SF&DL RR tracks on the other side of the berm north of Storybook Land and the Fantasyland Depot (visible on the right side of this circa-1960 Daveland photo).
CORRECTION: make that "extreme right of this 1961 GDB photo."
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