Railroad hits end of the line

It was short in length -- but long in its reach.

The Grizzly Flats Railroad's steam engines traveled for 70 years along a 500-foot-long stretch of rails next to the San Gabriel home of Betty and Ward Kimball.

Along the way, the Kimballs' picturesque narrow-gauge line helped inspire Walt Disney to build the famous passenger train system that circles Disneyland.

Now, though, its locomotives, vintage cars and caboose have been hauled away, and workers have finished pulling out the steel rails and wooden ties. Soon, the antique-looking Grizzly Flats train depot will be dismantled. The old train barn and firehouse will be demolished.

"It's an emotional thing. But it has to be done," said John Kimball, the couple's 66-year-old son.

"We grew up here. When I was a little kid I didn't know until I was in the sixth grade that it was unusual to have a railroad in your backyard. When I went to Temple City High School, I used to have parties in the caboose."

Ward Kimball, an animator who worked on Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," "Dumbo," "Fantasia," "Pinocchio" and "The Three Caballeros," died in 2002 at age 88. By then, he had already started downsizing his beloved Grizzly Flats Railroad.

In the beginning, Kimball's backyard railroad sprouted its tracks almost by accident.

Kimball was a lifelong train fan. On his first date with Betty, he had taken her to a rail yard to measure a box car. He and his new wife purchased 2 1/2 acres of a San Gabriel orange grove and were preparing to build a home in 1937 when he decided to buy a surplus train car to house his growing model train layout. For $50 he bought an abandoned narrow-gauge passenger coach (used on 3-foot-wide track instead of the standard 4-feet, 8 1/2 -inches) that Southern Pacific had operated in the Owens Valley.

A year later, he bought a similar-sized 1881 steam engine that was being scrapped by the Nevada Central Railroad. Later, he would also acquire a 1906 box car and caboose, a 1917 gondola and a 1915 stock car, along with a small 1907 switch engine used at a Hawaiian sugar plantation.

The weekend "steam-ups," as the Kimballs called them, attracted crowds. Workers and executives from Hollywood film studios often wrangled invitations, as did neighbors.

"You'd pull in the driveway and see all of this train stuff," said Bob Kredel, who was 9 and living in Arcadia when his next-door neighbor -- a friend of the Kimballs -- invited him to tag along for a steam-up.