In the backyard of a modest suburban home in Anaheim Hills, there is a mini replica of Disneyland.
David Sheegog calls it the Castle Peak and Thunder Railroad which is located just minutes away from the real Disneyland Theme Park in Anaheim.
Sheegog is an independent architect and created the smaller version of the beloved theme park as a miniature love letter to Disneyland and Disney animation -- a dream of his for over two decades now.
Over the years, Castle Peak has garnered the attention of local media and social media as it was once meant to be a gift for his children that has taken on a life of its own. Sheegog's kids have left home, but Castle Peak continues to grow.
65-year-old Sheegog is looking forward to retirement but is still in practice — he talks about Castle Peak as if it’s just getting started. In the family garage, you'll find not just storage but a workshop, currently home to a model for a “Star Wars”-inspired entryway that Sheegog hopes will someday be a new section in his backyard garden, inspired by Disneyland’s Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.
This is no mere modest hobby for Sheegog who thinks of entertaining guests, which are welcomed each spring and fall --- for free.
Sheegog has created small but irresistible touches to Castle Peak. For example, Sheegog’s version of the Casey Jr. Circus Train is equipped, for instance, with its own sound module, playing the locomotive’s theme song as it chugs across a bridge. In spite of the limitations of his backyard, he dreams of expanding his little entertainment attraction.
“There was a woman here one time, and she was close to 100,” Sheegog says. “She worked in the park on opening day, when Walt Disney was there, and worked in the park her whole life. She had a whole crowd around her, just listening to stories about what it was like. She started weeping. As she was talking, she was reliving her life when she was 20 years old, her first love, where she met her husband. All these memories come back, and a lot of people who come here are that way because we’re in Anaheim. We grew up with the park, and it has a certain sentimental niche in your psyche. People just want to be around it, and our place provides an outlet for that.”
Sheegog fell into model railroading about 25 years ago, when he was looking for a gift for a young nephew who is now in his 30s and was a fan of “Thomas the Tank Engine.” Shopping for the present at a local railroad store, the SoCal native who grew up within walking distance to Disneyland was suddenly hooked by the model railroad industry.
“This was back in 1997 or so, and I said, ‘This will be a 10-year project.’ As I developed the model — I built a model on our dining room table — we had to decide on the major structures,” Sheegog says. “Most of the garden railroads I had seen people had bought pre-made kits of little plastic buildings that are all about 12 inches by 8 inches. They look like premade little buildings, like a barber shop. No. I wanted to build this from scratch, and wanted them to be impressive, like 5 feet across and 4 feet tall. Or in the case of one our castles, 7 feet tall. I had to plan these out as to where the major buildings would be.”
Sheegog used to work at Disneyland on the Davy Crockett’s Explorer Canoes, and the family’s eldest daughter is named Ariel after “The Little Mermaid,” making Disneyland a natural theme for the family to explore for the backyard garden.
Sheegog says that it will always be free to visit his little backyard Disneyland, as the family doesn’t want to attract the attention of corporate lawyers. Also, timed reservations are required to make sure the home and neighborhood aren’t overrun. Sheegog has re-created references to the now-defunct Splash Mountain and Disney/Pixar films such as “Up” — he’s also sprinkled in hidden nods to most every Disney or Pixar animated film from 1937 (“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”) to 2021 (“Encanto”).
“That will be the last one,” Sheegog says of “Encanto.” “I’ve finally put a cap on it. I’ve got 80 films out there. It’s a bunch. I’m running out of room. If they keep coming out, I can’t keep doing something. All my energy is going into other projects with the railroad.”
When Sheegog builds a structure, it’s no simple feat. Occasionally, he says, he’ll get inquiries from guests on the cost of hiring Sheegog to build, say, a Sleeping Beauty Castle. “They think you can do it for $300 or $400, and I say, ‘It’s probably going to be about $70,000 to build that thing again,” he says. “It takes someone six months of their life to build that.”
Sheegog doesn't like to discuss money and says he's not wealthy. He wants to retire and though he can't do so at the moment, he’s quick to add that the castle didn’t cost him tens of thousands; he’s simply factoring in labor costs. He estimates that over the last two decades he’s put in what would be the equivalent of buying a pool into his backyard Disneyland.
Today, Sheegog is talking about expanding Castle Peak by moving the retaining wall on the house to build two new sections, one that nods to Disneyland’s Mine Train Through Nature’s Wonderland, which closed to make way for Big Thunder Mountain, and the aforementioned Galaxy’s Edge expansion. Time and money are hurdles, so he’s considered crowd-funding for Castle Peak’s continued development.
And yet that’s another aspect to Castle Peak’s enduring appeal. Like Disneyland, it’s never finished. “It’s like little home additions,” Sheegog says. “But rather than putting on a new bedroom we’re going to do another mountain or another rock feature.
Source: LA Times