Progress City, U.S.A.

In 1965, when Walt Disney moved into active planning for his “city of the future,” he needed artwork to get his vision across. To help sell the project to the Florida legislature and state officials whose permission he needed to create a new type of governmental district to govern his property in central Florida, Walt once again turned to Herb Ryman. Ryman, whose sketch had sold the Disneyland concept to financiers a decade earlier, joined the team that was toiling in secrecy to convert Walt’s dreams into some concrete and relatable vision.

As you can tell by glancing at our masthead, these were events for which we hold some interest here at Progress City.

Rendering of EPCOT/”Progress City”, 1965

Rendering of the approach to EPCOT’s city center, 1965

This concept for one of EPCOT’s outlying neighborhoods shows the satellite communities which would lie outside the city’s greenbelt. Residents would reach the city center via Peoplemover and other means.

A while ago I asked Imagineer George McGinnis if he’d ever worked closely with Ryman, and while they never worked directly together their artistic paths did cross thanks to EPCOT. Says McGinnis:

My first day on the job, 6-6-66, the project given me by Marvin Davis (Sr. Epcot Designer) was to design the modal split access between the Monorail and Walt’s “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow” WedWay Peoplemovers. (Interesting to note in his film Walt didn’t mention “Monorail” — he use the term “Rapid Transit”. Probably he had in mind GE’s sponsorship.)

Original concept for Walt Disney World Peoplemover by George McGinnis

Walt wanted [McGinnis's original Peoplemover design] enlarged for additional capacity. My immediate boss, Roger Broggie, walked into my office and found me working on the larger WedWay and asked, “Why I are you working on this?” I answered Walt asked me to do it. He quietly walked out. This helped me to understand Walt’s way of working — everyone worked for Walt and people respected this.

In this photo of concept art for EPCOT’s transportation lobby, note the smaller, original Peoplemover design on the turntable to the left. Says McGinnis, “Ryman’s original painting with the small cars I had designed. I don’t remember if I added these — probably did, looks like my work.”

This is the same rendering as above, except that the Peoplemover cars have been altered to resemble McGinnis’s later, larger design that was created at Walt’s request. Also note the monorail’s change from something resembling the later Walt Disney World Mark IV trains to the more traditional Mark III design.

I worked over one of Herb’s concept paintings for Walt’s EPCOT presentation, adding the larger WedWay (PeopleMover) Walt had asked me to design. I also used the larger WedWay in my painting for the same presentation in October 1966 to Florida’s governor.

We never heard from Walt after this on account of his illness that took his life in December.

“Another Ryman painting with the enlarged WedWay cars Walt asked me to design. I selected this painting because it let me show off the cars in a better way.”

While EPCOT city never came to be, some of its ethos rubbed off of the Florida property and on the theme park that bears its name. A few design concepts remained, too; EPCOT’s international shopping district was a revival of the old “International Street” expansion once planned for Disneyland – it would survive, in altered form, as EPCOT Center’s World Showcase.

Concept for the “Spanish district” of EPCOT’s International Shopping Center

Says McGinnis of those days:

I don’t think I ever worked directly with Herb, but our offices were close together and we had many conversations. I was always surprised how freely he spoke his opinions of WED operations.

Last thing he was working on was the Japan [Disneyland] concept and the day he left working at WED — he was in and out for projects — he stopped by my office to bid farewell, not knowing if and when he would be back. He passed away and John Hench remarked, “It is hard to imagine WED without working with Herb.”

Hard to imagine, indeed – and somewhat interesting to hear that from Hench, towards whom many of Ryman’s freely-spoken opinions were directed!

Special thanks to George McGinnis for sharing his memories for this article.

Ryman sketch for Adventures Thru Inner Space

In my most recent piece about Imagineer Herb Ryman, I mentioned how Ryman initially designed the “Mighty Microscope” of Monsanto’s Adventures Thru Inner Space to resemble an antique microscope that had belonged to his father. Ryman’s father, also named Herbert, had served as a local doctor before dying on the front in World War I. Another Imagineer who worked on the design of that famous giant microscope was George McGinnis, who sent in the following information:

Herb’s later concept of this antique brass microscope had portholes so the guest could see the shrunk AtomMobiles and people. I thought this was a great idea.

One day I was sketching an updated version on a napkin in the cafeteria. I wanted to have the idea “first reading” when the guest enters the load area. X. Atencio, (story director on the show) sat down to talk and he liked the idea and took my rough sketch to the model shop to have a model made.

This is an example of the close collaboration between the early team and the new kids on the block. It helped that WED Enterprises was at about 250 employees at the time. Only one small conference room and no executive cafeteria.

“The load area with the Mighty Microscope ’swallowing’ the AtomMobiles…”

“…And what concerned those younger than five — being shrunk!”

From George McGinnis comes this:

Front row: George McGinnis, Show Designer (1975) and Luc Mayrand, Show Designer (2005). Second Row: Bill Watkins, Ride Designer (1975).

Bill asleep on his thrill ride. Proof it only goes 30 MPH.

With me in the front seat at the 2005 reopening is the designer of the new show (mostly made it a darker ride). The new track follows Bill’s original design — smooth.

Notice the speakers built into the seats. This was my last design contribution under my consultant period after retirement in 1995. I sculpted the seats in automotive clay and the all new vehicle was made of lighter materials. I improved knee space in the front seat — for Bill.

I gave Mark V Monorail contours to the seats. Very comfortable. I don’t claim to have designed them. MkV interiors were done by Chuck Pelly’s Design Works, designer of many of today’s Mercedes and BMW seats.

Vehicle exterior in the photo is of the old car — a framing computer “set piece”.

In 2005 Space Mountain re-opened with a new track that followed the original design, and featured some new visual effects as well as on-ride audio. George, as show designer for the original attraction, was present for its 1977 unveiling where he was able to meet the six Mercury astronauts; he was also present at the 2005 re-dedication (where this picture was taken), where he met Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong.

You can read more about Bill and George’s work on the attraction, and see more from the re-dedication, in this 2005 article from MousePlanet.

When one thinks about Imagineering, it’s most likely that the mind first runs to the artists. With fifty-five years of renderings, sketches, models, sculptures and amazing artwork, it’s perhaps no surprise that the fine artists have often become the public face of Disney’s creative workshop. Unfortunately this can do a disservice to the engineering side of Imagineering. While perhaps not as photogenic as an artist’s rendering, the concept and execution behind something as groundbreaking as the Enhanced Motion Vehicle or a trackless, solar-powered ride vehicle is just as impressive and worthy of attention.

We’ve previously discussed the work of Imagineer George McGinnis, and he recently put me in touch with one of the company’s long-time engineering greats. William “Bill” Watkins worked with Imagineering from 1966 until 1985, having come aboard as a project engineer after stints at Lockheed, Marqardt, and Honeywell. He worked on scores of well-known projects over the years, from the PeopleMovers and Autopia to Space Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain.

Bill has been working to record some of his thoughts and experiences from the design process, and along with George he’s been kind enough to share some of these with us. Specifically, we’re going to take a look at the process behind the creation of Space Mountain, which opened first at Walt Disney World in 1975. More than just a simple steel coaster, this new attraction broke barriers at the time by using the new technique of Computer Aided Design. It’s an interesting look into the difficult practicalities that Disney’s engineers face when the blue sky concepts of WDI’s creative teams meet the immutable restrictions of physics.

How Computers Influenced Roller Coaster Design

William M. Watkins, Former Disney Chief Mechanical Engineer

When I was a child, probably seven or eight years old, I went on my first roller coaster ride at Camden Park in Huntington, West Virginia where we were visiting relatives. I remember being very frightened before my father and I got on it, but being very exhilarated after we got off. After we returned home to Indiana I built my first coaster with a ladder, a board, and my little red wagon. This resulted in the first of three broken arms that I suffered before I was twelve. Little did I know that nearly thirty years later I would get involved in designing coasters and other theme park rides for a living after joining WED Enterprises (now Walt Disney Imagineering) in 1966 and later at my own company, Ride & Show Engineering, Inc. I have designed just three roller coasters (not counting that first one): Space Mountain, Walt Disney World; Space Mountain, Disneyland (CA); and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Disneyland (CA); but Space Mountain, Disneyland, has been duplicated at Tokyo Disneyland and Hong Kong Disneyland Park. Big Thunder Mountain Railroad also exists at Walt Disney World, Paris Disneyland, and Tokyo Disneyland, each with somewhat different names and configurations to adapt to the local terrain. There are many coasters throughout the world, over 600 in the US alone, and so there are many designers. Some of the old coasters were designed by people who had not had technical training and yet they served their purpose well, providing entertainment with safety. However, times have changed and so has coaster design.

Final Disneyland Space Mountain engineering model

I will attempt to describe the approach that I developed for the design of gravity rides, an approach that would not have been possible without the advent of the digital computer because of the enormous number of calculations required. I recall a story by Ernest Gann, an engineer and novelist who wrote Fate is the Hunter. Many years ago he was in charge of a dirigible project and they were designing a large circular truss. They started by estimating the conditions at one point on the circle and a team of engineers spent an entire year calculating the stress in each member until they arrived back at the starting point where they found, as expected, that their original estimate was significantly off. So they re-estimated and started around again. Today, the whole analysis could be done in minutes if not seconds. The same thing applies to the designs of coasters today. That is not to say that a coaster can be designed in seconds. There are many programs to write, hundreds of decisions to make, testing to obtain data to plug into the computer, meetings with art directors, show designers, operations personnel, and shop managers. The whole design process took more than a year back in the 70’s, but the resultant design would have taken decades if it were not for the computer. Of course it would have opened on the same schedule, but would have been built to a lesser standard.

At the time that I began studying coaster design in 1968, computer use was just becoming more common. Disney was using computers for animation control and business applications but these computers were very slow and involved punch cards. For engineering applications, we tied into a main frame computer in Omaha via a dial-up modem with an electric typewriter. Though cumbersome by today’s standards, it was light-years ahead of what had gone on before.

My approach to coaster design was influenced by my experience as a race driver and a pilot. This may come as a surprise to those who are not familiar with racing, but the most important factor in driving a race car rapidly through a curve is the ability to minimize the lateral loads on the car by taking the proper path, maximizing the radius through the curve and to do it smoothly. Piloting technique is much the same. A good pilot banks the airplane smoothly and will coordinate his turns by applying the proper amount of rudder. Otherwise he puts undue stresses on the equipment and causes discomfort to his passengers.

Imagineer William Watkins riding on single-seat test vehicle to evaluate banked curve geometry

It was my belief, especially in regard to Space Mountain, because the ride is in the dark, that the ride should be smooth and since there would be a lack of visual cues, the g forces should be limited. A brief explanation: g loading is expressed as a ratio of the force developed in changing speed or direction relative to the force felt due to the earth’s gravity. The smaller the curve radius and the higher the speed, the higher the g force. Thus, a 2g force on a 100 pound body causes it to to weigh 200 pounds. Race drivers in the Indianapolis 500 are subjected to more than 3g’s in the corners and there are loop coasters that subject passengers to as much as 5g’s. I decided that there should be a maximum of 2.5g’s for our coaster designs. I tested this premise by exposing myself to 3g’s in high banked (70.5 degrees) turns in an airplane. I felt that if 3g’s was OK for me, who’d had a disc removed from my back a couple of years earlier, then 2.5g’s should be safe for the vast majority of riders. So you might say; yes, but what about someone who is weaker than you? Two things: if all rides were geared to the weakest among the population, there would be no rides. The second point is that the operations personnel are charged with, through signage, informing people of the nature of the ride and denying boarding to people that they feel are not capable of withstanding the forces.

Not all g forces increase the weight of the passenger. As a vehicle goes over the top of a hill the load on the passenger becomes less than earth’s gravity and, in the extreme, could throw an unrestrained passenger out of the car. Some coasters do subject passengers to slightly negative g’s which cause them to raise off their seats and become “weightless” for a short period. And this is often touted as a desirable feature. However, in a dark ride such as Space Mountain, we felt that it would be best not to raise passengers off their seats because of the possibly of injury when they sit back down, especially when the g’s rapidly become positive. So the top of hills (negative vertical curves as we call them) are designed to lower the passenger’s weight by just 75%, leaving 25% of their weight still resting on the seat. Thus passenger loading varies from 0.25g’s to 2.5g’s as they travel through Space Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

The next issue is the direction of the g forces. There have been rides like the Wild Mouse which is a series of flat circular curves connected by straight sections. The g forces are all lateral, suddenly pressing the passengers against the side of the vehicle or against each other. These are rides that are usually found at carnivals and are relatively inexpensive and easy to set up. More sophisticated rides have banked turns. If the turns have 100% banking, then the g forces are directly into the seat with no lateral component. This could be considered ideal but is impossible to achieve for every vehicle because it is dependent on the speed of the vehicle and that varies due to several factors that will be explained later. Overbanking is to be avoided because that would cause the passenger to tend to fall toward the center of the curve. Underbanking is better because it causes the passenger to press against the outside of the car, but with much less force than with the unbanked turn. And people are used to experiencing forces toward the outside of turns when riding in automobiles on curvy roads. So curves were designed for 80% banking for the slowest vehicles to avoid the possibility of overbanking.

The next issue is how to gracefully transition from a “wings level” (as we say in flying) condition to a banked condition. Formulas for putting mechanical components, such as valves in an engine, into motion without inducing sudden impacts are well known in engineering and these same formulas can be applied to the change in bank angle when entering and departing a curve. The amount of banking increases inversely with curve radius, so during the transition phase where bank angles are smaller, the radii must be larger than the final curve, so this defines the shape of the total curve, i.e. turning gradually at first and tighter as the bank angle increases.

The next issue in curve design is establishing the line about which banking takes place. Visualize what happens when a high-wing fixed gear airplane banks. In a right turn you will see the wings moving to the right while the wheels move to the left. That means that somewhere in between is a point that does not move relative to your body. If those wheels were on a fixed track, the track would have to be moving up, swinging around that point. The best track design is one in which a point on the centerline, a few inches above the seat , will follow a smooth line into and out of a banked curve. By defining this line and swinging the track around it, the disturbance of the passenger is minimized. Contrast this with the usual practice in the old wooden coasters in which banking is achieved by raising the outer rail thus tossing the passengers toward the center of the curve.

Raising the outside rail tosses the passenger toward the center of the curve. Swinging the track about an elevated line simulates flying in an airplane.

To design a ride such as Space Mountain to fit in a confined space, be smooth and have the capacity to accommodate a large number of passengers each day, it is necessary to accurately calculate speeds and timing. In order to avoid the possibility of collisions between vehicles, the track is divided into zones which are on shorter time intervals than that in which the cars are dispatched and each zone is protected by brakes. The speeds, and thus the timing of vehicles, is a function of changes in elevation, and the various drag factors that tend to slow the vehicle down. There is the rolling resistance of the wheels, friction in the bearings and seals, viscous drag of the wheel lubricants, scrubbing of the wheel treads due to minor misalignment, and the aerodynamic drag. Some of these factors are influenced by the weight of passengers carried, some are not. That is why heavy vehicles are faster than light ones. Although some of these factors may seem small, they are significant over the entire length of the track. As a matter of fact, it is the designers job to manage the drag so that most of the energy of raising the vehicle to the top of the lift is consumed by the drag while the vehicle is coasting down, converting that energy to heat.

So, as I said, It takes thousands of calculations and a lot of trial and error to arrive at a final design and, without a computer to do those computations, it would have taken much longer than Ernest Gann’s circular truss to design Space Mountain.

Many thanks to Mr. Watkins and to George McGinnis for putting together this look into what went in to designing this groundbreaking attraction.

Odds are that if you’re reading this, you’ve put together a school project at one point or another. Maybe it was your elementary school science fair, or maybe it was your doctoral dissertation in particle physics. Either way, you’ve spent some time working one one of these projects. Maybe you won a blue ribbon for your idea, or received an award or some grant funding. But did any of you get a visit from Walt Disney and a decades-long career as an Imagineer?

George McGinnis did.

This veteran Imagineer, responsible for EPCOT Center’s Horizons attraction as well as many others, got his big break in 1966 when, as a student at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, he was pursuing a B.S. in Product Design. For his senior project, McGinnis drew up a proposal for a high-speed train system to serve the northeastern rail corridor of the United States. That same semester, he had also submitted the design in a contest sponsored by the Alcoa corporation.

It lost, coming in second place to an all-aluminum garden cart.

Thankfully, for George, he had way better things than Alcoa on the way. You might say a great big beautiful tomorrow was in store, because Walt Disney was about to build a city of the future and he was personally going to recruit McGinnis to help out.

What’s always amazed me about Walt’s intentions for EPCOT was how prescient they were about problems that still plague our cities and urban areas. Key to the entire project was innovation in the field of transportation; the idea was to get cars off the roads, replacing them with a series of peoplemovers, monorails, and trains. While the jammed freeways that concerned Disney so much in 1966 would unfortunately only become more of an issue over the next 40 years, that just makes the efforts of Disney and his Imagineers seem unexpectedly timely.

The same could be said of McGinnis’s train proposal, which directly addresses problems currently being hashed out in 21st century America. Many issues, from geopolitical conflict to global warming to simple expense, have forced people over the last several years to re-examine the American dependence on gas-burning automobiles. Faced with melting icecaps and $5-a-gallon gasoline, many drivers have turned to our nation’s rail system.

The problem facing this trend is that, after years of neglect and underfunding, the American rail network is woefully behind the times. Aside from the vast swathes of the nation that are completely without access to rail transport, even high-traffic corridors on the coasts are operating on obsolete infrastructure that prevents an adequate level of service. Amtrak’s most advanced train, the Acela line, is the only high-speed rail service in the nation, and even that is typically forced to operate, on the average, at about half of its maximum possible speed. Although it’s by far the nation’s fastest train, its reliance on legacy track that winds through heavily populated areas forces the Acela to operate at speeds far below typical “high-speed” specifications and far, far behind advanced rail service in Europe and Japan.

What’s remarkable about McGinnis’s proposal is how forward-thinking it was in addressing these problems. His proposed train route which, like the Acela, would run from Washington, D.C. to Boston with stops in Philadelphia and New York City, would use underground tunnels. This would allow for straight, fast routes that did not depend on winding legacy track or grade crossings in populated areas. While this might sound like an expensive fantasy, it was based on a report by the Rand Corporation that estimated that advances in tunnel boring would reduce the expense of such a project enough that tunneling costs would intersect with those of land acquisition for an above-ground project by as early as 1970.

A diagram of McGinnis’s proposal shows the route of the transfer shuttle as it leaves the station and descends to the main rail line, 500 feet below ground

The greatest innovation of the plan, though, was how it would deal with the loading and unloading of passengers and cargo. As rail passengers know, train service is pretty useless unless it provides for stops at multiple locations along the route. At the same time, the constant starts and stops a train has to make at smaller urban areas practically negate the point of high speed rail.

McGinnis’s proposal solved that issue by designing a train that wouldn’t stop at every station that it serviced. While the train would indeed stop in major cities like Boston or New York, in smaller towns like Providence or Wilmington, riders would board and disembark via a separate vehicle, powered by linear induction, that would actually match the speed of the moving train, physically dock with it, and transfer passengers and cargo via a large turntable mechanism. Thus, high-speed trains could service a number of stations along its route without ever breaking its stride. Let’s take a closer look at how it would work.

A close look at the High Acceleration Transfer Shuttle illustrates the rotating, semicircular compartments, with passengers seated on the upper level and baggage stowed below

Let’s say you were a passenger waiting to board a train in Baltimore. Upon entering the station you would scan your ticket or credit card, which you would then keep. Upon reaching your destination you would scan your ticket or card again, and only then would you be charged the appropriate amount for your trip. Your luggage would be checked and loaded aboard one of nineteen containers, each coded for different destinations. Remember that this was 1966 – imagine how this could be achieved today with RFID tagging technology. The baggage containers would then be loaded aboard the lower level of the transfer vehicle.

After taking escalators or elevators down to the train concourse, riders would board the transfer vehicle through elevator-style doors; they would not see the exterior of the train itself. Each compartment in the transfer vehicle would have two doors, three feet wide, which would allow for quick boarding. Loading time would be a brisk ninety seconds.

The High Acceleration Transfer Shuttle would consist of two, semi-circular, 39-person compartments. The wide-body coaches would allow a spacious 3-2 seating configuration in the transfer vehicle, with a three-foot aisle. With an unusually wide seven-foot track gauge and fourteen-foot-wide coaches, the train would provide a smoother ride than current rail vehicles; this extra stability would be needed for the safe transfer of passengers.

The seats in the transfer vehicle would be pitched by 29″, and would automatically swivel so that passengers would always be in the most comfortable position to compensate for the g forces caused by acceleration and deceleration. To ease the effect of riding in a windowless underground train, McGinnis suggested the transfer vehicle feature “television and music.”

Once loaded, the transfer shuttle would move forward onto a track that would lower to a 20% downward slope. Not only would this sloping track help the vehicle reach the main rail line, 500 feet below ground, but it would make use of gravity for a “freebie” 4.4 miles per hour per second of acceleration. The sloped acceleration would reduce the possibility of discomfort to passengers, and would allow stations to be built closer to the surface instead of at the level of the mail rail line.

After waiting on the ramp for no more than thirty seconds, the train would accelerate to 200 mph in eighteen seconds and over only half a mile of track. This would be achieved via linear motors, a concept that would later be used in attractions as diverse as the WEDway PeopleMover and the Rock N Roller Coaster at the Hollywood Studios park. McGinnis saw linear motors as the best way to achieve the precise level of acceleration control needed to match the speed of the transfer car with that of the High Speed Train. It also allowed the high rate of acceleration – 0.5g, or 11mph/s – needed for the proposed system.

McGinnis’s model shows the Transfer Vehicle (l) coupled with the High Speed Train (r). The transfer turntable is mid-rotation in this picture, moving new passengers onto the train and disembarking passengers to the transfer shuttle.

The quick acceleration of the transfer shuttle would allow it to match the velocity of the High Speed Train. It would pull alongside the train’s Loading Car, located at the center of the train. This Loading Car would be very similar in design to the Transfer Car, with guests intending to disembark from the train seated in an identical semicircular compartment. As soon as the speeds of the two vehicles were matched, a pressurized seal would deploy to couple the Loading Car (on the main train) and the Transfer Car. And here’s where it gets really interesting.

Once linked, the Loading and Transfer Cars would form a full circle. This turntable would then rotate 180 degrees around a common center between the two vehicles. Thus, the boarding passengers aboard the Transfer Shuttle, along with all their luggage, would be moved aboard the main train. All the disembarking passengers from the High Speed Train would be moved aboard the Transfer Shuttle. And it would all take place in eight seconds.

Once the compartments had rotated, the trains would decouple. The High Speed Train would continue to its next stop, without missing a beat. Having just boarded, we would leave the Loading Car to make space for passengers preparing to depart at the next station. We would then find our seat in the appropriate coach; the Loading Car is located at the center of the train to minimalize foot traffic on either end of the train. Beneath us, our luggage would automatically be moved by a conveyor system into storage along the lower level of the train until it was ready to be retrieved when we disembark.

The trains, like the transfer shuttle, would be spacious and comfortable. Each coach would hold 180 passengers, in a 3-3 seating configuration, with either three or four coaches on each side of the Loading Car for a total of six or eight coaches per train. Like the transfer shuttle, the aisle in the coaches would be three feet wide. This would reduce traffic and make it easy for riders to quickly reach the Loading Car to disembark.

Passengers approaching their destination would be notified to proceed to the Loading Car by a paging system. For transfer points fifty miles apart, this would give passengers a five-minute window to walk to the loading car. For transfer points twenty miles apart, they would have a two-minute window. Disembarking passengers would enter the transfer compartment that had just been vacated by the newly-boarded riders, the train would couple with the Transfer Shuttle, and the turntable would engage. Riders, along with their luggage that had been automatically retrieved from its storage in the train, would find themselves once more on the transfer vehicle.

The transfer would take place over half a mile, and for safety reasons the vehicles would then have a mile for emergency braking if needed. Then the uncoupled trains would separate, as the transfer vehicle would decelerate over a half-mile of track, this time sloping upwards at twenty degrees. The upward slope would assist in braking, as well as returning disembarking passengers to station level. The shuttle would have gone from 200 mph to a full stop in eighteen seconds.

After the sloped track behind the shuttle was raised, the vehicle would take sixty seconds to return to the station. All told, the entire circuit from loading, to coupling, to transfer, to return would take only two minutes. After ninety seconds for passengers to disembark the transfer shuttle, the vehicle would be ready to re-load and do it all again.

The plan was rather ingenious and addressed a number of issues that face current transportation systems. First, it would provide the benefits of rail travel – large capacity, fuel efficient vehicles that reduce traffic load on roads and the accompanying air pollution and automotive fatalities.

The underground train system would add a number of efficiencies that rail services currently lacks, as well. Trains could now complete with air travel on a speed basis, and they would be more energy efficient from not having to decelerate and accelerate at every station. Maintaining a constant speed would also reduce wear on rails and equipment, allowing for longer operational lifetimes and lower costs in the long term. Increased speed would allow for more trips per train, reducing the need to invest in extra rolling stock.

The plan would have additional benefits to urban areas. Without the need to obtain above-ground rights of way, stations could be placed in built-out urban areas. McGinnis, in his proposal, cited the benefits of preserving city cores and reducing growth pressure on large cities. These mid-city terminals could also be used to transfer passengers to other, local forms of transportation.

It’s an ambitious plan and something that sounds familiar to anyone well versed in the plans for EPCOT, but for McGinnis it was just a school project until the acting president of the Art Center brought it up in a conversation with Walt Disney. John Thompson, who had previously served as editor of the Ford Times, had similarly introduced Walt to another future Imagineer of renown, Bob Gurr, more than a decade earlier. This time, he later related to George, he told Walt, “McGinnis will bring his train over on his back to show you.”

Wouldn’t you?

McGinnis (l) and Bill Mitchell, Vice President of Styling for General Motors

McGinnis’s project had already received some attention; it had been inspected at the Art Center by Bill Mitchell, Vice President of Styling for General Motors. In a funny coincidence, Mitchell and McGinnis had graduated from the same high school in Greenville, Pennsylvania (albeit eighteen years apart). They shared a love for cars, too, in those high school days, but even this brush with executive celebrity probably couldn’t prepare McGinnis for when John Thompson told him that Walt Disney wanted to see his train.

Sure enough, Walt came to the Art Center to see George’s project. With him, he brought Gurr, Dick Irvine, Roger Broggie and John Hench – future legends, all.

So, no pressure.

Thankfully things went perfectly – almost. McGinnis’s model was a working one; equipped with micro-switches, tiny motors with friction drives would turn the semicircular transfer compartments on the train. It had always worked perfectly… until Walt pushed the shuttle and it jammed. As McGinnis would later say, “My hand never worked so fast unjamming it.” Walt, perhaps deciding to take it easy on a nervous student, simply remarked, “This would have to be fail-safe.” “Yes, sir!” McGinnis replied, and quickly pointed out the built-in emergency braking distance on the diagram.

That glitch aside, McGinnis’s demonstration must have gone well; after Walt left, George Jorgensen, head of the school’s Industrial Design Department, told McGinnis that Walt wanted him to come up to visit WED Enterprises and ride the test track for the then-under-development WEDway PeopleMover. Walt’s visit to the Art Center marked the first time that McGinnis had ever heard of Progress City, and now he was being asked to come help develop its transportation system. While McGinnis was, in his words, “elated,” he had in his head the vision of full-sized trains, not the model vehicles he eventually was to design for the Progress City diorama that would serve as the finale for Disneyland’s Carousel of Progress. He would design them, though; transportation systems for Progress City and later EPCOT, from Peoplemovers all the way down to golf carts.

George McGinnis’s “golf cart of the future” for Progress City/EPCOT

One amusing aspect of the tale is how, as always, one could say that “Walt works in mysterious ways.” On the way back to Glendale after viewing the train proposal, Bob Gurr would later tell McGinnis that Walt had remarked offhandedly, “We can use another Industrial Designer at WED.” Sure enough, George got his invitation to come tour the department and take a look at the PeopleMover prototype, after which Walt handed him off to Dick Irvine who took him into his office and invited him to become an Imagineer. As Irvine would tell him during that first interview, “Nothing goes out the door without Walt’s approval”.

Talk about the ultimate quality assurance.

And so McGinnis became an Imagineer, taking over a cubicle surrounded by a handful of prominent art directors. Later he would get an office next to Gurr’s, which he calls “one of the most important things to my career at WDI.” His list of subsequent projects is long, but includes Space Mountain, Horizons, Dreamflight, Splash Mountain, the Indiana Jones Adventure, Kilimanjaro Safaris, and appropriately the WEDway PeopleMovers at Walt Disney World and the Houston Intercontinental Airport, and the Mark V and VI monorails.

All from, perhaps appropriately, a “toy” train.

Incidentally, McGinnis still has his train model – he says it’s out in his garage with his old 1971 Datsun 240Z, which he used to drive to his office at Imagineering every day for twenty years.

Nothin’ like the oldies!

He assures me it still runs great.

Special thanks to George McGinnis for his kind assistance in the preparation of this article. Those interested in reading his original project proposal can download it here.