Orange Empire RR Museum - Grizzly Flats Blg

The Grizzly Flats Railroad (GFRR), a famed 3-foot narrow-gauge backyard railroad created by Disney animator Ward Kimball in San Gabriel, CA, is now a major exhibit at the Southern California Railway Museum (formerly Orange Empire Railway Museum) in Perris, CA. The collection includes locomotives Chloe and Emma Nevada along with several older Southern Pacific cars.

Disney animator Ward Kimball, a lifelong railfan, purchased a second locomotive, the Pokaa, which was a 0-4-2T steam locomotive built by Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1907, and it originally ran on the Waimanalo Sugar Plantation on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. He renamed the locomotive from Pokaa to Chloe, after one of his daughters. The Chloe had its saddle water tank removed and replaced with a rear water tank bunker. It was also re-equipped with a balloon shaped smokestack to resemble the 1880s Haleakla locomotive.

Here's a peek inside the cab of Grizzly Flats 0-4-2T #1 Chloe.

The boiler was hand fed wood logs making the job of the fireman somewhat hard but luckily the trackage was only 3 ft narrow gauge and 900 feet long so not a long trip to stoke.

Sorry for the blur - didn't catch it in time to take better one!

Kimball purchased the Sidney Dillon locomotive for $400, preventing it from being sold for scrap in Japan. It was a 2-6-0 steam locomotive built in April 1881 by Baldwin Locomotive Works for the Nevada Central Railroad, which ran between Battle Mountain and Austin, Nevada, until it closed in 1938 due to competition from road vehicles. It was renamed Emma Nevada, after the late 1800s opera star Emma Nevada. Kimball named his railroad Grizzly Flats Railroad (GFRR), which eventually consisted of 900 feet (274.3 m) of 3 ft (914 mm) narrow-gauge track, including a 500-foot (152.4 m) mainline. The GFRR became the first full-size backyard railroad in the United States.

Crizzly Flats 2-6-0 #2 "Emma Nevada" was a coal burning locomotive. Unfortunately, Ward Kimball was forced to stop running the Emma Nevada in 1967 due to complaints from his neighbors regarding the coal smoke it created.[

The Chloe pulled a set of train cars around Walt Disney animator Ward Kimball's property. The cars were custom made by Kimball, consisting of a four-bench open car built around 1975 and two passenger-carrying gondolas built around 1993. This is one of the handmade open air cars that Ward Kimball built.

This historic gondola was built for the South Pacific Coast RR (SPC), a narrow-gauge line incorporated in 1876 that ran between Oakland and Santa Cruz. After Southern Pacific purchased the SPC in 1887, some of its narrow-gauge equipment, including #216, was transferred to the Southern Pacific narrow-gauge lines in the Owens Valley of eastern California. It is one of four SPC cars preserved at the Southern California Railway Museum (formerly the Orange Empire Railway Museum) in Perris, California, along with a coach, a boxcar, and a stock car.

This information sign was attached to the historic gondola.

The Southern Pacific gondola known as SP 222 is a historic narrow-gauge car preserved at the Southern California Railway Museum (formerly the Orange Empire Railway Museum) in Perris, California. It is a wooden 3-foot narrow gauge gondola car that served the SP narrow-gauge division until 1960 when it was finally shut down. It was lucky enough to be preseved by the OERM staff.

The Southern Pacific 449 is a historic narrow-gauge boxcar currently held in the collection of the Southern California Railway Museum (formerly the Orange Empire Railway Museum) in Perris, California. It was a wooden boxcar retired by the Southern Pacific railroad by the 1950s. After retirement, it was initially preserved at the Kern County Museum (labeled as car #1). It was acquired by the Southern California Railway Museum in the 1990s and remains a complete car within their permanent collection. The car is part of the museum's Grizzly Flats Roster, a special collection of narrow-gauge equipment originally preserved by Disney animator Ward Kimball.

The West Side Lumber Company wooden caboose #7 is part of the permanent collection at the Southern California Railway Museum (formerly known as the Orange Empire Railway Museum) in Perris, California. Built in 1949 by the West Side Lumber Company’s own workshop in Tuolumne, California. It was constructed on the frame of an old narrow-gauge logging flatcar and served as the last caboose built for the railroad. After the railroad closed in 1960, the caboose was acquired by Disney animator Ward Kimball for his private Grizzly Flats Railroad. It was later donated to the museum as part of the Grizzly Flats collection. The museum rebuilt the car's body with new lumber to restore it to its original appearance as it looked while serving the narrow-gauge logging lines in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Nice information sign on the caboose.

A small four-wheeled, 3-foot gauge Rio Grande Southern (RGS) track inspection motor car built in the 1920's with a Fairmont gas motor, often referred to as a "speeder," is part of the Ward Kimball's Grizzly Flats Railroad collection located at the Southern California Railway Museum (formerly Orange Empire Railway Museum) in Perris, CA. It served as a maintenance-of-way vehicle for the 3-foot gauge RGS in Colorado, used for inspecting tracks and repairing rail joints or telephone lines. It is part of the collection once owned by Disney animator Ward Kimball, which also includes the narrow-gauge "Chloe" locomotive and various passenger/freight cars at the Southern California Railway Museum.

Nice information sign on the Rio Grande Southern speeder at the museum.

lymouth locomotive #589, nicknamed "Old Smokeless," is a 25-ton narrow-gauge gas-hydraulic switcher formerly used at a gunpowder factory. It became part of the Grizzly Flats Railroad collection (famously owned by Disney animator Ward Kimball) and is now located at the Southern California Railway Museum in Perris, California. It is a 5-ton, B-wheel arrangement gas-hydraulic switching engine and is powered by a Harvester UC263 80hp engine. It served as a utility engine for the Grizzly Flats Railroad and was noted for being one of the few narrow-gauge (36-inch) gas-hydraulic units in the collection.

Here is another view of the Plymouth 5 ton loco nicknamed "Old Smokeless" that is now housed in the Southern California Railway Museum (formerly the Orange Empire Railway Museum) in Perris, California.

A rare example of a wooden Southern Pacific whistle post tht would alert the engineer to blow his whistle at crossings.