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New Orleans Square station is unusually crowded today,
and the air unusually humid this late summer afternoon, lending an air of
authentic Crescent City atmosphere to this corner of Anaheim. Across the
tracks, the telegraph sounder clacks out its repeating message, the rhythmic
tapping mesmerizing and hypnotic. The drone of bees in the nearby flowerbeds
lulls one into a state of perfect bliss.
A ways down the track, the lonely water tower, standing
like a sentinel at the entrance to a deep, dark tunnel, drips a steady
trickle of water onto the ballast-covered ground. At the other end of the
station stands a stately semaphore signal--an "order board" once used to slow
or stop trains so operating orders could be passed up to the train crews.
Today, it serves a different function: When it lowers, a train's arrival is
imminent.
At the far end, beyond the order board, stucco walls
and wrought iron balconies of old New Orleans frame another dark tunnel.
As the telegraph sounder continues its ceaseless
clicking, some on the platform notice the order board has begun to drop,
squeaking slightly as it does so. Now, its blade is in the horizontal
position. Beyond the New Orleans tunnel, we become aware of a far-away
hissing, that grows steadily louder. The recorded station spiel requests our
ATTENTION PLEASE, informing those who didn't see the order board dip that a
train is arriving at the station. The hissing grows louder, and a muffled
chuff can now be heard. The sound continues to reverberate through the
tunnel, building excitement on the platform as curious kids (and adults)
crane their necks and squint into the tunnel's foreboding darkness to get
their first glimpse of the mystical steam locomotive.
In an explosion of sound and motion, the train breaks
free of the tunnel's darkness and bursts into New Orleans Square. The
fireman begins ringing the bell, and the crisp peals echo off the
surrounding walls. The engine steams past the waiting crowds, and the
engineer waves to all, repeating a tradition from the earliest days of
railroading. The train comes to a stop, and in a flurry of activity,
passengers begin to disembark and board.
The engine simmers and pants, seemingly anxious to
continue her journey. Like all beasts of burden, she must be watered, and
the fireman climbs through the rear of the cab, up onto the tender tank, and
opens the hatch. He lowers the giant waterspout, and the vital liquid begins
to flow. The tender isn't like the ones on steam trains most folks know
about. This one is attached to the same frame as the locomotive, making
engine and tender one single unit.
The Fred Gurley simmers near the
Frontierland Water Tower in the mid-1990s.
The engineer climbs out of the cab and takes the time to oil around the
engine a bit. The red wheels glisten in the sunlight. Brass bands encircle a
bluish boiler, and the smokestack wears a jaunty gray cap. The engine
continues to impatiently pant and hiss, when, above the noise, the
conductor's ancient call of "All Aboard" grabs the engineer's
attention. The engineer makes his way to the cab with his oilcan and rag,
but pauses for a moment near the cab door. With pride customary to his
profession, he wipes a smudge of dirt off the cab side, so that the name
painted there, Fred Gurley, will remain unblemished.
With two loud blasts of her whistle, the engineer pulls
the throttle. The engine bears against the weight of her train, struggling
to gain the traction of steel wheels on steel rails. A loud "CHUFF!" is
followed shortly by another, as the tiny steed begins moving the eight-car
train. The smoke and steam explodes though the stack and up to the sky
proclaiming to all that the train is moving. The engine dives into the
tunnel past the water tower, and is enveloped in the dense blackness within.
The train cars obediently follow, clicking along the tracks. Moments later,
the last car disappears into the murky darkness. At New Orleans Square
station, it's quiet again.
The telegraph sounder continues to clack, and the bees
continue to drone. Water continues to dribble from the water tower. And in
another 20 minutes, the Fred Gurley the oldest steam locomotive owned
by the Disney empire, will come this way again.
The Fred Gurley was "born" in 1894, a product of
the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. While the
similar Disney locomotive, Ward Kimball, was built a year after Walt
Disney's birth, the Fred Gurley began life a year after Roy O. Disney
was born. A year after the Columbian Exposition of 1893, it was the height
of the Gilded Age in America. Victorian tastes still dominated much of high
society. It was a year of great inventions--Thomas Edison had filmed the very
first movie ever made, showing his assistant Fred Ott in the midst of a
self-induced sneeze.
Fred Ott is captured sneezing on the very first copyrighted motion picture.
It was available to see in the Main Street Penny Arcade for many years.
But it was also a time of great strife, as the divide
between the wealthy and the working class became ever more apparent. The
railroad industry saw some of the worst violence. In what would become a
pivotal moment in labor history, 13 strikers at the Pullman Palace Car
Company in Chicago were killed when Federal troops were called in the break
the strike. Down in the bayous of Louisiana, life on the Reserve Plantation
was a little simpler. Leon Godchaux, the plantation's owner, sat in a
rocking chair overlooking his cane fields and pondered his good fortunes.
Godchaux himself was a simple man. He had arrived in
Louisiana in 1837 at 13 years of age, nearly penniless from France. He saw a
market in selling needles, thread, lace and other notions to the ladies of
the large sugar plantations along the Mississippi River, because often they
could not get to the big cities frequently themselves. Young Godchaux turned
this simple business into a General Store that he purchased when he was 16.
In 1850, he purchased his first sugar plantation, and began acquiring other
plantations when he could.
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