Train Driver

I hope I'm posting these correctly... Anyway, the controls to the train are very basic, as far as I remember - there was a green start button that needed to be pressed at the same time as the station control person. This person stood next to the train watching down the length of the train to make sure nobody broke through the cue gate while the train was debarking. If someone did (usually it was a small child) he would hit a red panic button to stop the train. We had the same big round red panic button on board. It was a little deceiving, because when you hit it, the train simply cut power and coasted to a stop. The train never "lurched," either starting or stopping. I never told anybody this, but one day I hit the one male ostrich they had (affectionately named "Junior" because he was 7 feet tall) He was walking toward the train right next to the tracks. I figured he was smart enough to get out of the way, but he wasn't. I hit the panic button and the train continued coasting to a stop. It hit him at about 2mph, just enough to send about 10 feathers flying, but did him no injury at all. He gave me a look as if to say "Why'd you do that?" then continued walking down the side of the train. The throttle was just a small round knob, a little larger than the size of a milk jug cap. The controls look very similar to many of the other rides in the park. There was a silver box with about 8 or ten red lights mounted on it - these were connected to the fire extinguishers mounted over each electric motor (each train car had a motor). If one of the extinguishers would go off, the corresponding indicator would light up. One time as I was leaving the station, they all lit up at once. It turned out to be an electrical short, and none of the extinguishers had discharged. There was a square mount with nothing on it, when I asked what that was for, I was told that the trains used to have mounted radios until one of them caught on fire. The driver had to evacuate the train in a hurry - he had no time to notify anyone using the radio, which was mounted inside the train. After that, each driver was given a walkie-talkie.

KI considered you a performer - with costumes and everything, and you got a little lecture about how you were to conduct yourself in a manner that was friendly and professional - which is totally understandable. They had a program that was designed to encourage this - whenever you got a compliment from a patron, or you did something above and beyond the call of duty, they would give you an "Apple" card - 10 apple cards would get you a new colored apple sticker that you could put on your name tag. Our costumes were different from the other employees - designed to look the part. There is a huge building that maintains all of the costumes for the park, and each day you got your costume from there. At the end of the day, you took your nametag off and handed it over to them to be washed and/or repaired. Can you imagine what kind of job that is each day?! At that time we had to memorize a spiel that we would deliver over the main intercom of the train - basically we had to memorize certain facts about each of the animals, and if they were visible, you did that part of the spiel - if not, you didn't - so each go around was different. After I left working there I came back to ride as a patron. They had replaced the driver's spiel with a recording of the Channel 5 weatherman who talked about all of the animals whether you could see them or not. The crew cross-trained in everything and rotated responsibilities, including taking tickets and assigning cars (the patrons had to spend an extra $1 to ride), manning the station's emergency safety switch, which was used to stop a train if someone broke through the cue lines and got on the tracks while the train was entering the station - this job also doubled for giving clearance to a train about to leave the station, help patrons leave the exit platform, and add or subtract trains from the main line depending on how big the crowd was that day. The trains themselves are electrically powered of course, and if you were to look closely under the cowlings, you would see that each car has a set of rubber tires running on twin rails. Occasionally one of those tires would go bad, and would cause the train to rock back and forth from side to side. When that happened, the supervisor called the maintenance department, who could come over, take the train off the main line, jack up the car and change out the tires. I was told that the trains were designed to move upwards of 60 miles per hour, but the controls were set so that the maximum speed would only be around 5-7. More later...

Thank you for posting this report! I drove all of these trains (except I think for 7, which had a fire before I started working there) in 1984 (it was the first year for the Cobra). Theresa was the head train driver (supervisor) that year. Anyway I've been looking all over the internet for ANYTHING regarding KI's Wild Animal Habitat. There isn't ANYTHING out there, no pictures, no websites or anything - not even a scan of a KI pamphlet from those years - at least that I can find. if anybody has pictures of those days, please let me know. I remember that every night we would close up at 7:00pm, and a lot of times the whole crew would run across the park, pretending to be the Brady Bunch, ("Greg! We need to get these plans to Dad!") so that we could ride The Beast a thousand times. It was actually a very dangerous job for only $3.00 per hour! If there is anybody else out there from those days, I'd love to talk to you. Keith Menter