Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Photo courtesy of Steve Tickes

Walt Disney (left) chats with Los Gatan Billy Jones, for whom the Wildcat Railroad that runs through Oak Meadow and Vasona parks is named.

Picture from the Past

John S. Baggerly

Walt Disney, Billy Jones alliance was a close one

Take a train trip, and you may sit next to a man who professes that he preferred the old steam engines to modern diesel jobs. Sip a cup of coffee in downtown Los Gatos, and you may chat with a newcomer who asks where the old railroad ran through Los Gatos, into the hills and through tunnels to Santa Cruz.

Return a telephone call, and you--at least if you're this writer--are talking to Steve Tickes, a Los Gatos Weekly-Times subscriber who offers to show his 15 reproductions of photographs involving Walt Disney. For Los Gatans, the prize photo is the one of our own Billy Jones visiting with Disney at his Southern California estate.

Another prized photo in the collection is that of a reconstructed horse barn on his estate that Disney recalled fondly from his youth in Missouri. It was on the outer walls of original barn that young Walt used tar and a stick to draw his first cartoon figures.

Tickes acquired his photo collection in an unlikely manner. On the job at Lucky Supermarket, he met a woman with a slide collection of the Disney ranch and home in Southern California. From her slides, he produced his collection.

It is no accident that Tickes settled in the West Valley. Born in Sacramento, Tickes' father tired of the heat and moved his family to San Jose area, partly because great-great grandfather Edwin Cox had farmed in Saratoga where today a street--Cox Avenue--bears his name.

Tickes' interest in Billy Jones' railroad came naturally. Tickes' father-in-law, Karry Derrington, helped lay tracks when the Billy Jones engine was moved to Oak Meadow Park and into adjoining Vasona, a county park.

Tickes made his first trip to Disneyland in the 1950s. Trips south became annual events for him and wife, Donna, and children Brian, Jennifer and Kevin.

The Disney-Los Gatos connection is actually an old one.

Back when there were service stations on downtown corners, the late Louis "Lou" Sporleder--or perhaps it was Ed Malatesta--called the local press to inform that a limousine driver had asked the way to Billy Jones' Railroad, which ran among his fruit-tree orchard on outer N. Santa Cruz Avenue at the corner of Daves Avenue.

The limo may or may not have contained the future monarch of the Magic Kingdom, but Disney was contemplating creating a passenger-carrying miniature railroad at that time. Disneyland may have been in the back of his mind, but the park idea was not yet common knowledge.

The Disney-Jones alliance became a close one. Jones was at the throttle when the Disneyland train made its first run. Himself a steam-engine nut, Disney built a miniature line on his estate, and true to rail procedure he acquired a right-of-way through his wife's garden.

Jones had originally been a working engineer who met his wife in a coffee shop during a water stop at Wright's Station, which was between Los Gatos and Santa Cruz.

Romance rode the rails more than once. A Los Gatos man riding the old Interurban Street Car from Los Gatos to San Jose courted a pretty co-rider by bringing her spring wild flowers. Marriage resulted.

Not everyone loved Billy Jones' orchard railroad, particularly fathers who tried to get Sunday garden work out of their children. When the kids heard the train's whistle, they would whine to take a ride.

Jones ran his railroad free of charge on Sundays for the benefit of local groups. He kept donations in a large glass jar. Child work crews did not reassemble easily after a train ride, but at least the snookered dads gained a happy memory.

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