765 Engine Day - Fort Wayne, IN
Posted by: 
bluesneaky
N 41° 04.727 W 084° 56.186
16T E 673348 N 4549554
Since 2005 this celebration has been held to honor the 1944 SuperPower steam locomotive that is operated by the Ft Wayne Railroad Historical Society.
Waymark Code: WMCZJ3
Location: Indiana, United States
Date Posted: 10/30/2011
Views: 5
By official proclamation the Allen County Board of Commissioners declared the 28th day of October as Engine No. 765 Day in 2005 and ever since the Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society has been celebrating the last weekend in October as Engine 765 day. The celebration now runs for 3 days. The engine is fired up and you can walk through the cab of it! They also have lots of other rolling stock on display and in 2011 were giving caboose rides as well. (no food or drink is available though)
The engine is a monster of a machine. It is not your ordinary steam engine. It is one of the very few remaining "SuperPower" steam locomotives in operation. IT IS BIG! It has the 2 wheels in front, 8 gigantic drive wheels, followed by 4 smaller wheels in the rear. It weighs in at 808,000 pounds! It stand 15 feet tall! Its huge! And it hauls down the rails at 60 mph!
It was built in 1944 in Lima Ohio and ran the Nickle Plate line through Ft. Wayne until being retired. It saw its last "official" use one cold wintery day when a diesel passenger train broke down near Ft. Wayne and it was called into service to keep the train warm. It was then returned to its garage where it stayed until it was donated to the city of Ft.Wayne to be put on display in a park in 1963.
If you are a old timer in Ft. Wayne you may remember it. It sat on the south east corner of Clinton and 4th Streets for 9 years. It wore a different number back then. Although it had always been number 765 it was repainted as 767. WHY? Well back in 1953 No. 767 was pictured in the grand opening of the elevated tracks and passenger station going through the heart of down town on the north side. Ft Wayne had ask for that same engine to be put on display since it was going to be within site of the original passenger platform. 767 was in storage and available but it was not in as good as condition so 765 was substituted in its place. Oddly enough though as a twist of fate, 765 was really the first engine to have ever traversed the elevated rails through downtown that they were celebrating. It just wasn't the engine that was used in the official celebration. In any case it stayed there in the park on the corner for passerby's to look at for years and years.
Then in 1972 it was acquired by the historical society and carefully moved via temporary tracks out of the park to its present garage to be saved and if possible, returned to service. It took years of work to get it going but they did get it going. In 1979, twenty one years after its retirement it moved again under it own power. The Historical Society became the first non profit organization in the world to restore and operate a main line steam engine! In the years that followed it would put on over 52,000 miles giving excursion rides to over 100,000 people all over the east coast of the U.S.
It finally came time for a total rebuild and it went into the shop again in 1993. It took 12 years to rebuild it this time but in 2005 it came back online in near perfect "like new" condition just as it was 61 years before. The engine is now on its third career!
For a full read on its history go to (
visit link) and visit the celebration next year. :-)