Letter: Transportation museum has plans to keep growing

To the people of Hamilton, Tipton and Marion counties, the board and volunteers of the Indiana Transportation Museum would like to express our deepest gratitude to all of you for your support, including our last day at Forest Park in Noblesville.

For more than 52 years, the museum has been a part of Forest Park. With our train rides, we gave classes on the history of Indiana rail transportation to schoolchildren in Noblesville and neighboring communities.

Our volunteers also learned with our community. Many adult and young teenage volunteers learned about working on our historic rail equipment keeping it all running safely. We are proud of all our volunteers who learned at ITM, then went on to become new railroaders for Norfolk Southern, CSX and Burlington Northern railroads.

Individuals and families visited ITM and the Noblesville community from around North America and the world. Operating our trains and seeing the incredulous faces of your children as they saw and touched a real train for the first time gave us more pleasure than we ever imagined possible.

ITM and its volunteers are honored to be part of your families’ favorite memories. You will always be among our favorite memories. We will never forget serving you.

While our museum will no longer be located in Noblesville, we really won’t be far away. Very soon ITM train rides will start running again with excursions and caboose rides in north central Indiana and southern Indiana and other locations in the Midwest.

We’ve grown and are now partnering with other organizations to serve residents and visitors around Indiana and in neighboring states. We invite you to watch our website and check your local TV stations and newspapers to come ride our trains. Please stay tuned for the rebirth of our 100-year-old steam engine, the NKP 587, and ITM’s next 50 years.

Again, thank you for half a century of supporting us and allowing us to educate and serve you. ITM will not be derailed by excuses and minor claims. ITM has grown and learned from this one point of our existence. We will continue to serve Indiana communities and educate on railroad transportation commerce in Indiana.

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Les McConnell, chairman
Indiana Transportation Museum