As part of the historical record, here are the slides from my first visit to Noblesville, in April 1979.
At that time it was the Indiana Museum of Transport and Communications, or IMOTAC, a catchy acronym we still sometimes use in preference to ITM. The storage barn was the only structure on the museum grounds, which generally looked like our material yard, or worse. With a few exceptions, the traction collection was an assortment of derelicts.
In its early days IMOTAC collected a wide variety of equipment of various sorts. On this visit there was no one on the property when I arrived. The gate was open so I drove in and wandered around for almost an hour. Finally a couple of guys showed up and started working on some machinery in the yard. They didn't know anything about the railroad collection; they were sawmill fans!
CA&E 308 was inside the barn; it was quite dark, so this picture is not very good. This is the #1 end, next to a CTA 4000. The #2 end is the one that was disassembled, but that was against the rear wall of the barn. Work on the car had stopped several years before this, I believe, and basically nothing had changed by 1996 when we were able to purchase it.
The CRANDIC locomotive, #55, built by Detroit United Railways:
The body of the Indianapolis streetcar. I believe it is still sitting in the same exact location.
The body of Union Traction 429 (maybe), the Noblesville:
The body of Indianapolis & Cincinnati 606, later Union Traction/IRR 447:
And the body of THI&E 81, a 1902 Jewett combine:
North Shore car 172, which is privately owned, was at the door. It was probably still operational at that time. You will notice that IMOTAC had already started collecting Amtrak heritage cars.
The Twin Branch battery locomotive was out in the yard. Behind it is the fence marking the park boundary, and beyond that the Nickel Plate main line.
Finally, one of the steam road cars, a NYC obs car, the Sandy Creek.
Of course, I wish now I had taken a lot more!
5 comments:
Kudos to Walt Stafa for noticing that the slide of the Indy streetcar was inserted backwards. That's been fixed. I hate it when that happens....
If I have the history right, this would be shortly before ITM started the Fair Train (C. 1982) and evolved into what they are today. During this time, 172 would have been the main people hauler on the demonstration trolley line in the park (at this time not going down the hill toward the river as of yet), and the Twin Branch engine was the main switcher on property.
Thanks, Zach. That certainly sounds plausible. I just don't remember noticing at that time whether the line down the hill was there, but if it reached the end I would have seen it, so I would agree that it wasn't there yet.
What is the current status of the collection? I read somewhere they had a falling out with the Parks Dept or something. Is there anything left there that is salvageable? Lee Duncan
All I can safely say is that the current status is chaotic. The museum has been evicted from Forest Park but is fighting for more time to find a solution. We had best leave it at that.
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