Steam & Excursion > 3 operating steam locos operating in the Land of Lincoln this wee

This weekend you have the rare opportunity to ride behind 3 steam locomotives within 200 miles of each other here in the state of Illinois. Monticello Railway Museum will be operating Southern 401 during Railroad Days. The Illinois Railway Museum will be operating Frisco 1630 at Showcase Weekend. And the Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society will operating NKP 765 on the Joliet Rocket. Please get out and support these steam operations this weekend.

For more info and tickets go to the following websites.

www.mrym.org

www.irm.org

www.fortwaynerailroad.org

I'll be riding behind one of them!!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/13/18 13:55 by ghemr.

If everything works out I will be at Monticello on Sunday with the family. Looking forward to going again after we couldn't make it last year

My wife and I are doing all 4 trips in  the Joliet Rockets "open air" car this weekend!!

-Fred-

The only Joliet Rocket trip this weekend that is NOT sold out is the Sunday morning trip.

-Fred-

flyingfred Wrote:
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> My wife and I are doing all 4 trips in  the
> Joliet Rockets "open air" car this weekend!!
>
> -Fred-

I'm in town for IMTS and can't make any...so close yet so far away... :(

We appreciate the dedication!

Kelly
FWRHS

flyingfred Wrote:
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> My wife and I are doing all 4 trips in  the
> Joliet Rockets "open air" car this weekend!!
>
> -Fred-

Kelly,

Looking forward to seeing both #765 and yourself this weekend. Back in April I talked the same friend that joined me for "The Varsity" in 2016 into flying up again from Florida for tomorrow afternoon's run on the "The Rocket" in the open car. We'll leave Cleveland after I mark off @ 3:30 heading to Union for a couple hours in the morning at IRM before we head back south to Joliet. Afterwards we'll continue on to Monticello and spend Sunday morning there before returning to Cleveland.

I don't know if there was a concerted effort to have these events occur on the same weekend or if we just plain got lucky but in any case we certainly are thankful to all involved for the opportunity to enjoy the results of all the hard work and long term planning required to make any of these operations possible. I'd also like to offer that we believe all of them represent great value and appreciate how it isn't getting any easier moving forward.    

Odd that they don't include this on the "401 in Steam" web page.  BTW, IRM's Shay was also fired up at least on Sunday but not operating except for a hundred feet or so.  There are still some items being worked on before it can pull trains.

---

filmteknik Wrote:
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> Odd that they don't include this on the "401 in
> Steam" web page.

Not a "steam weekend," exactly.  This year had #401, Wabash #1189, Illinois Central #8733 and Milwaukee Road #1149 operating.

Mary McPherson
Dongola, IL
Diverging Clear Productions

Nevertheless, that page would imply those are all the dates you can see 401 running.   That they didn't bother to include last weekend is rather astonishing and quite frankly kind of stupid.  How tough is it to add one line of text?  Now I know that seemingly handy list cannot be relied upon and I suppose I will have to read through the entire site or look to outside sources to really know.  Between IRM's activities, 765's visit and, um, the 70mm film festival at the Music Box Theatre I doubt I'd have had time but still.