CP & LE Railroad - History

A great website that has been offline for quite sometime is now up again that gives a great overview of the CP & LE Railroad.

Check it out here.....

https://cplerr.weebly.com/

That was interesting. Nice trip down memory lane. I never knew (or maybe I just forgot) that the railroad started only a couple years before I started going to the park. Thought it had been there longer than that.

It's amazing to see where the train station in the main midway was back then, right next to the skyride station.

Good to see that the old website was able to be archived.

A lot of the material was obtained from employees of the railroad in the early years of operation, right before and right after it was sold to the park. Most of this is in the hands of a former employee and current employee. This material is all hard copy, so although the electronic version perished, it was still possible to rebuild it. It just takes a long time. Matt did a really good job putting this back together.

I had never seen the site before until now. What a huge amount of information and history!

There is a Boneville thread in the history forum where some of the past history of the train is discussed. It is nice to see a lot of that information confirmed. There are also some additional YouTube videos out there now.

Boneville thread

Nice website, glad they documented all this. I liked seeing all the old maps, too, and how the railroad has been moved around over the years. Great history section, enjoyed reading about the stories of the engines. I remember the Jennie K and didn't realize it had been sold off, and is going to be used for a private estate of a Disney Imagineer!

Interesting, they said they got the idea for the railroad from Disney, and from what I can remember reading, Disney got the idea for their railroad from Coney Island in Cincinnati.

Boy, that was a park I wish I could have visited in my time. Coney Island had not only rides, but a huge swimming pool and a dance hall for the evening. Sounds like an awesome date. Too bad about the flooding, but Kings Island came out quite remarkable out of it.

What I miss most about Boneville is not having a roller coaster behind the last big scene of the fire.

I hope Cedar Point thinks more about atmosphere and aesthetics with their future plans. Thinking about that "Western Cruise" reboot.

^Well I had it set to play at 1:35 but I guess it didn't compute. Video is from the linked Boneville thread.

You know, Sunlite Pool and Moonlite Gardens are still there and still operate. And Coney Island is an amusement park once more with a lot of flats and a bad coaster. But the grounds are pretty much the same and a lot of structures and buildings from Coney are still there. You should go.

The half sunken paddlewheel boat in the lagoon was also a nice touch.

Was on the train today and I guess someone wanted to have some fun so they blew the whistle to the tune of Jingle Bells just before arriving in frontiertown.

This is just a random thought but since Boneville was brought up, I would like to see the park install some sort of landscape screening behind the length of the first scene. The wooden fence isn't very tall and slowly over the years the natural trees and vegetation has disappeared. Now you see an endless amount of back of house items (Haunt props and decorations, old signage, etc.) in storage that sort of take you out of the theme. Not hiding back of house items very well has always been a personal pet peeve of mine (exacerbated by my time working for Disney). However, the Boneville one just seems to stand out to me personally.

Absolutely one of my favorite rides in the park. Thankfully it hasn't been removed yet and, hopefully, never will. Thanks for the link to the history. My mom's side of the family grew up in Lakeside/Marblehead so I've been going to Cedar Point since 1971. Since not everyone likes roller coasters, the train was one of the rides we could all do together.

Mr. Potato said,

I would like to see the park install some sort of landscape screening behind the length of the first scene.

I agree. And I wish they could find some way to mask Rougarou behind the burning hotel scene. It's just lost all "believe-ability" (if it ever had any) with the coaster visible behind it. I suppose there isn't enough clearance. (Before Mantis was built and the lagoon where it sits filled in, there were flames coming out of the roof of the house, too. I'm sure those were disconnected due to the wind and proximity to the coaster.)

I noticed Sunday that the gates still go down at the RR Crossing when the train is pulling IN to FrontierTown. I imagine that's a safety precaution. I wonder what the probability is of the train overshooting the station and if there was any incident/close calls that led the park to take this precaution. To my knowledge, it's always been this way. My first memorable train ride was probably late 70s.

That's pretty much standard operating procedure. Knotts does the same thing (and their trains have full air brakes). The probability is very low. You just want to have the crossing area clear of pedestrians when the train is approaching.

Bigmal said:

I noticed Sunday that the gates still go down at the RR Crossing when the train is pulling IN to FrontierTown. I imagine that's a safety precaution. I wonder what the probability is of the train overshooting the station and if there was any incident/close calls that led the park to take this precaution. To my knowledge, it's always been this way. My first memorable train ride was probably late 70s.

I used to wonder the same thing until many years ago, saw on opening weekend the train was overshooting that station. Probably due to new ride-ops that had not got much practice in yet. I did think it was funny though!

^ride ops don't actually run the engine, that is the engine house which falls under maintenance. The rides team runs the platform, conductor and gate houses.

samosuband said:
^ride ops don't actually run the engine, that is the engine house which falls under maintenance. The rides team runs the platform, conductor and gate houses.

Up until 2014 the Engine House was part of park operations. Also if it was opening weekend, no new crew member would have been at the throttle. They would have been learning how to fire and oil.

Well, if no new member was allowed to be at throttle, then someone dropped the ball! I would find it embarrassing not stopping the train where it is supposed to, and then have to back up. I remember me and several others just laughing when it happened and saying outloud, "oops!". It happened more than once that weekend. But have not seen it happen since.