I was watching a movie that came out in 1977, and the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad came out in 1979 at Disneyland. Well, that movie is called dun, dun Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind. In the movie, there is a train set (Yes, a train set - wink wink, runaway train), with a mountain in the middle of it, and it's brown which a bunch are brown. One of the biggest things in that movie is the mountain.

So, I think Disney copied right from this movie about how to make Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. The model mountain looks just like the mountain that Disney has. Even in this movie, they have that lantern I seen at Disney World's one for when the train to leave the station (blocks are clear, it stops flickering).

The animals though were in that area already with something around wilderness and nature ride, so they just took them from that ride and put them on the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

If it's as hokey as Earthquake was with the toy trains falling, and cardboard buildings tipping over, etc. But then again it was the seventies and there was little in the way of computer graphics. See the first run of Star Wars where you can see the cutouts around all the ships. Avatar it ain't.