Written by Hannah Palsa
Chapman Center Scholar
Student Curatorial Assistant – Beach Museum of Art
“Oh, Cricket’s the name. Jiminy Cricket,” chirped the suave cricket in the Walt Disney Productions’ 1940 adaptation of Pinocchio. The sharp dressed cricket acted as Pinocchio’s conscience throughout the film, and sang the well-known Disney classic, “When You Wish Upon a Star.”1 The animator of Jiminy Cricket, Ward Kimball, had worked at Disney since 1934. In addition to Jiminy, Kimball helped redesign Mickey Mouse in the late 1930s, and served as the main animator for the Lucifer, Jaq, and Gus in Cinderella (1950), and the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland (1951).2 A member of Walt Disney’s beloved, “Nine Old Men,” Kimball enjoyed his time at Disney. Yet, his real love remained trains and railroads; a love which developed during his boyhood years in Parsons, Kansas.
Parsons, Kansas served as a central hub for the Missouri-Kansas-Texas railroad. The town’s founder, Levi Parsons, served as president of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas railroad (later known as the Katy). The site of Parsons was chosen because it served as a meeting point between Junction City, Kansas and Sedalia, Missouri, two stops on the Katy’s journey.3 It was here in Parsons, that a young Ward Kimball developed a lifelong admiration and love of trains.
Ward Kimball was born on March 4, 1914 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His father, Bruce Kimball, was a traveling salesman and Kimball frequently spent time in the care of grandparents and other relatives. Part of his boyhood was spent in Parsons, Kansas under the watchful supervision of his grandparents and uncles, Parsonian residents. In a featured article in the 1965 Railroad magazine, Kimball recalled: “Frequent trips to Parsons waterworks, where the Katy Flyer used to come around the curve with much smoke and whistling, also were a contributing factor to my early love of railroads.”4 In addition, Kimball reminisced fondly about playing in the graveyard of old and rundown Katy locomotives. A boyhood spent among steam locomotives and train tracks cumulated in a long-lasting appreciation of trains which followed him into adulthood and his job at Walt Disney Productions.
The animators who made up Walt Disney’s “Nine Old Men,”: Les Clark, Marc Davis, Ollie Johnston, Milt Kahl, Ward Kimball, Eric Larson, John Lounsberry, Wolfgang Reitherman, and Frank Thomas all held a mutual love and respect for the iron horse. Yet, it was Ward Kimball and Ollie Johnston who took their love of railroads from boyhood fantasies to reality. In 1949, Ollie Johnston began building a miniature railroad in his backyard. Upon viewing it, Walt became inspired and began constructing one in his own backyard.
However, Kimball acquired his railroad before Johnston and Disney. In 1938, Kimball purchased leftover rolling stock from the Nevada Central Railroad which had gone out of business. Kimball saved the Sidney Dillon from becoming scrap, and after restoration, set the railcar up in his backyard. Kimball and friends labored for over three years, laying down track, and building a shed for the engine and coach. Two other locomotives would join Kimball’s Grizzly Flats Railroad in later years.6 The Grizzly Flats Railroad, along with Disney’s backyard railroad, Carolwood Pacific Railroad, became the inspiration for Disneyland Railroad inside Disneyland. The railroad depot inside Frontierland came from Kimball’s own Grizzly Flats Railroad.7 In later years, Kimball donated his railcars to the Southern California Railway Museum in Perris, California. In 2005, Disneyland debuted the Ward Kimball, the Disneyland Railroad No. 5 locomotive named in honor of Ward Kimball.8
Ward Kimball passed away on July 8, 2002, at the age of 88. He was the third oldest living of the “Nine Old Men,” behind Frank Thomas (2004) and Ollie Johnston (2008). Kimball’s characters of Jiminy Cricket, the Cheshire Cat, and the Mad Hatter remain beloved by generations. His humor and wit still gossiped about by Disney animators. (Ward helped spread the rumor that Walt Disney wanted his body to be preserved in ice after death). As demonstrated by the Ward Kimball at Disneyland, Kimball’s love of trains remains even after his death. A boyhood shaped by the big locomotives of the Katy line rumbling through Parsons, Kansas transpired into an adult man living out his own boyhood dreams on the Grizzly Flats Railroad.
- Andreas Deja, The Nine Old Men: Lessons, Techniques, and Inspiration from Disney’s Great Animators (Boca Raton: CRC Press Taylor & Francis Group, 2016), 118, Todd James Pierce, The Life and Times of Ward Kimball: Maverick of Disney Animation (Jackson: The University of Mississippi Press, 2019), 53. ↩︎
- Deja, The Nine Old Men, 128, 131, Pierce, The Life and Times of Ward Kimball, 115, 140, 157. ↩︎
- William E. Connelley, Biennial Report (Topeka: Kansas State Historical Society, 1916), 219. ↩︎
- Jim Davis, “F.Y.I: For Your Information,” The Parsons Sun (Parsons, Kansas), April 5, 1965. ↩︎
- Pierce, The Life and Times of Ward Kimball, 58,
↩︎ - Michael Broggie, Walt Disney’s Railroad Story (Pasadena: Pentrex Media Group, 1997), 220, 266, Pierce, The Life and Times of Ward Kimball, 187-188. ↩︎
- Steven DeGaetano, The Ward Kimball: The Story of Disneyland Engine No. 5 (Pasadena: Theme Park Press, 2015), 10, Andrea Ford, “End of the Line: Locomotive From Back-Yard Railroad Heads For Museum,” Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, California), November 16, 1992. ↩︎
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