Disney’s tiny railroad goes green
In Disneyland, the trains will now run on biodiesel. (via) Of course, they’re steam engines — so I always assumed they were running on half-sized lumps of coal. But you can heat steam with anything, and prior to this conversion it was just regular petroleum-derived diesel. Maybe Eurodisney will go nuclear.
Incidentally, the Disneyland railroad is a modern example of a narrow gauge railroad. Narrow gauge predates the locomotive, and was typically used for industrial purposes. It’s faster and cheaper to build, since it can make tighter turns and requires smaller tunnels. Today, they’re often tourist attractions, in the US, Wales, and throughout the world.
In Budapest, the narrow gauge Children’s Railway (above) is run by children. Adults actually conduct the trains, but children operate the switches and signals, take tickets, et cetera.
And those Disneyland trains? Uncle Walt bought them from a line in the Yucatan region of Mexico. Before they burned either diesel or biodiesel, they burned wood.
