From the Park Trains group. The gauges are 7 1/4, 15, 24, and 36:

Labor Day weekend Hesston Indiana will be the only place in the world
with 4 gages of steam locomotives running at 1 time and hauling
passengers.

mikell

www.hesstonvolunteers.com

Rumor has it that the restoration of the 3-truck New Mexico Lumber Company Shay has been completed and the Labor Day weekend events will include the "official" return to operation. This has also been mentioned in the Sept 2006 issue of Trains.

Anyone know anything more specific ?

http://www.ngdiscussion.net/cgi-bin/NGD ... read=79154

Shay 7 Hesston Steam Muesum Return to Steam *LINK* *PIC*

Posted By: Ted Rita <Send E-Mail>
Date: Tuesday, 22 August 2006, at 12:00 p.m.

The members of the LaPorte County Historical Steam Society dedicated our Shay (ex New Mexico Lumber #7 / Oregon Lumber 107) at a members' only party last Saturday (8/19). We had a great dinner, then after words, the Shay made it's first trip pulling passengers in 21 years.

The public dedication of the Shay will be on Saturday at noon, Labor Day Weekend. It will steam all three days Sat - Monday! Don't miss it!

The link below will take you to a site that you can veiw and purchase prints, all proceeds will go to maintaining the Shay.

Thank you for all your support! Now if anyone has some nice 3' cars for sale, email me off line.

Ted Rita
General Manager,
Hesston Steam Museum

I highly recommend a visit.

Great place!

I am pleased to report that the weekend festivities at Hesston (at least on Saturday!) were everything promised, and then some.

While a bit difficult to locate, once you're there, there's little doubt you're in the right place, the smell of wood and coal smoke saturated the late summer air. This place is an absolute wonderment of steam, and they pull out all the stops for the Labor Day Weekend event.

Hesston features full size narrow gauge steam, both 1/2 and 1/4 size rail operations, a fully operational steam powered saw mill, an operational steam powered electricity generating plant, and many steam powered tractors. In addition there was a steam powered crane fired up as well.

The highlight of the day, at least for myself, was the official public unveiling of New Mexico Lumber Co/Oregon Lumber Co Shay #7. This engine was damaged in a fire several years ago and the volunteers at Hesston have worked for over 3 years to return this engine to operation.

While everyone on site knew what was coming, a comment I overheard really put it into perspective. The engine was staged behind a thick stand of trees just prior to pulling around a curve for it's "official" unveiling.
You could hear all the sounds of the engine idling away, and the comment was made, "This is just like the movie Jurrasic Park, you can hear it, and you're just waiting for the dinosaur to come around the trees into view".

After several words from the head of the museum, and an additional few word from Train's Magazine's Jim Wrinn, the "dinosaur" came into view, greeted with a cavalcade of whistle salutes from the various tractors and other steam operations on-site. After a christening, the train was loaded and began it's new, and hopefully very long, career of passenger trips at the Hesston site.

Over and above the Shay, I heartily recommend the Hesston operation. I had it on my list of places to go for several years and had just never gotten around to it, I'm sorry I missed so much for so long, and will be back many times in the future. Very educational, and compelling stuff all around.

I've set-up a Flickr album with some of the Shay operations from Saturday, click this link to enjoy.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/19332706@N00/

Unfortunately, I didn't realize that Flickr treats the uploads on a LIFO basis, so the photos actually appear in reverse order. They're marked appropriately so it shouldn't be too hard to figure out.

Thank you FoxValley, and thank you to all that made it out to Hesston this Labor Day Weekend!! We had a great time too.

These words really mean a lot to me and I'm going to read them to our entire membership. We have had such a great response to our show and the progress we've made in the last few years.

Don't forget we are always looking for new members and volunteers and you can sign up at www.hesstonvolunteers.com as well as see photos of the Labor Day show. Join in and get in on the ground floor of our next projects; rolling stock rebuilds and restoration of our #2, 2-6-0 Porter built in 1911.

The Shay 7 continues to run through out the fall and will be out on the line the last two weekends of Oct when we host the Hesston Ghost Train. Come out and get your steam fix before Steam Season fades into winter....

Thanks again to all our supporters,

FULL STEAM AHEAD,

Ted

Ted,
Thanks for your words, I was just lucky enough to be there and amongst the first to post a report. Kind of like thanking Walter Cronkite for one of the Apollo Moon launches :-)

It's surprising to me that Hesston isn't better known about.
It's an easy journey from Chicago and not that far off the major highway.
Even I have to confess that being a lifelong Chicago resident, and having spent many many days right down the road checking out the South Shore Line action in and around Michigan City, that it took me 45 years to get there. A mistake on my part !

You definitely have an operation well worth the visit for anyone interested.
The return of the Shay is simply another major jewel in the collection.