RailSmith - Lilly Belle - Passenger Car, Heavyweight, Observation Concept Car - Carolwood Pacific - Lilly Belle

Specific Item Information: Special Production Note: This car does not come with a coupler, thus not a completed ready-to-run car. This car like all our Concept Cars, are completely produced by hand, and hence its limited quantity. Our own very special railing with ‘hidden Mickey’s’ makes this a real beauty!

This model represents the classic car Lilly Belle as it is at present day Disneyland. It was originally the observation car of the passenger train known as RETLAW 1 the day Disneyland opened, July 1955. Reintroduced in 1976 and named for Walt Disney’s wife Lillian, the Lilly Belle is a car classified as a ‘Presidential Car’ that is reserved for special riders.

Road Name History: The Carolwood Pacific Railroad (CPRR) was a 7 1⁄4-inch (184 mm) gauge ridable miniature railroad run by Walt Disney in the backyard of his home in the Holmby Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, in the United States. It featured the Lilly Belle, a 1:8-scale live steam locomotive built by the Walt Disney Studios' machine shop, and made its first test run on December 24, 1949. The locomotive pulled a set of freight cars, as well as a caboose that was almost entirely built by Disney himself. It was Disney's lifelong fascination with trains, as well as his interest in miniature models, that led to the creation of the CPRR. The railroad, which became operational in 1950, was 2,615 feet (797.1 m) long and encircled his house. The backyard railroad attracted visitors to Disney's home; he invited them to ride and occasionally drive his miniature train. In 1953, after an accident occurred in which a guest was injured, the CPRR was closed to the public.

The Carolwood Pacific Railroad inspired Disney to include railroad attractions in the design for the Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, California. Railroad attractions in Disney theme parks around the world are now commonplace. The barn structure that was used as the railroad's control center is now at the Los Angeles Live Steamers Railroad Museum in Los Angeles' Griffith Park. The Lilly Belle, some of the freight cars, and the caboose are now on display at the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco, California.

Read more on Wikipedia.

Brand/Importer Information: RailSmith is a brand launched by Lowell Smith in 2019. Lowell acquired the toolings from Walthers.

With each release, RailSmith will bring passenger cars from across the spectrum of North America’s railroads, with the goal of building entire trains over a period-of-time. It is our plan to release cars that might be for a specific train, but you can use these cars as you see fit, as did the railroads.

Production plans are grand, but we believe they are also achievable. We do not have the capabilities to release an entire train at once, but being able to focus on one release (two-or-three cars at a time), we can build a train over time.