Monday, February 25, 2008

Santa Fe & Disneyland R.R. Tickets - Part 1

In today’s post we take our first look at Disneyland’s Railroad Tickets. As you may know, for the first couple of years Disneyland had two separate train attractions, one at each of its two stations.

Main Street Station had what was once called the “Santa Fe and Disneyland Limited”. You boarded windowed, indoor style cars “for one first class passage” and you took a round trip circle tour with no stops. If the “Freight” train was stopped at the Frontierland Station, the Limited used a parallel set of tracks as a “passing siding” and passed right on by. Same deal at the Main Street Station. How cool would that have been to see in person!

Here is one of those early tickets for the “First Class Passage”. It’s not dated but I would put these at 1955-56 and early 1957, does anyone know for sure? All the stubs for each realm are just for show, alias this train did not stop in Holidayland or Adventureland or anywhere but Main Street. There is a conductor’s portion that is missing. Jed the “ticket with stub” king over at Vintage Disneyland Goodies may have one. Post it if you got it - Pretty please....







Here is the same type of ticket but in grey. The print is the same as the yellow one so I have no idea why there was a different color? Maybe it represents “child” or “adult” or maybe they just ran out of the other color? I posted this one vertical so you can read the little stubs, they are so cute! This ticket is 11” long; Knott’s had huge train tickets too! Did real train tickets used to be a foot long?







This image is borrowed from Miceage, this ticket is for the “Western Route”. “Frontierland Freight good for freight or cattle passage”. This was for the train from Frontierland Station which originally had true “standing room only” cattle cars. These were soon converted to open side cars with bench seating. (I think they still have these cars and they drag them out every once in a while). The stub does more or less indicate this is a round trip with no stops.











In the next installment of this series we will take a look at the tickets that followed these as a third station was added and the “Passing Siding” was eliminated. Check for part two on Wednesday, tomorrow we are having a “Private Party” at Disneyland!

6 comments:

The Viewliner Limited said...

Absolute beauties. My favorite Disneyland tickets of all time. Cool stuff VDT. Thanks

Major Pepperidge said...

Very nice! I have three complete Disneyland RR tickets (with conductor's checks) that must be pretty early. If they turn out to be different from whatever you plan on posting, I'll send you some scans.

jedblau said...

I also have a conductor's check from a ticket used on opening day (I got it at the same time as the Mark Twain ticket...) I'll post it eventually. Thanks again for the great blog!

Anonymous said...

Isn't the earliest tickets for only two stations since that's all there was. Here's a closed an auction with the tickets:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290212383649&category=13844


Better copy the picture before the auction is no longer visible.

Vintage Disneyland Tickets said...

Hi Jeff,

Check out part two of the Train Ticker Series.

http://vintagedisneylandtickets.blogspot.com/2008/02/santa-fe-disneyland-rr-tickets-part-2.html

The two station ticket you mention that was on Ebay is the second version. The first version shown in this Part 1 post are from when each of the two stations only offered “round trip” service, they did not stop a the other station. Both Frontierland and Main Street station had “bypass” tracks.

Lynnette said...

My mother recently gave me her unused 1956 Sante Fe tickets and I am willing to scan them and send you a copy if you like. Would love to know if their is many out there like them still.