‘765’ rolling back into town

The Fort Wayne Rail­road His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety 765 engine will be com­ing to Belle­vue this week­end to cele­brte Nor­folk South­ern Railway’s 30th anniver­sary. The engine vis­ited Belle­vue last fall on its way on an East­ern tour. (Gazette pho­to­graph by Becky Brooks)

By Becky Brooks

Man­ag­ing Editor

news@gazettepublishingco.com

The Fort Wayne Rail­road His­tor­i­cal Society’s 765 steam loco­mo­tive has been hired by Nor­folk South­ern Rail­way to cel­e­brate its 30th anniver­sary and the his­toric engine will be rolling into Belle­vue on Friday.

Kelly Lynch, his­tor­i­cal soci­ety spokesman, said on Mon­day that the crew of the engine and train are putting the fin­ish­ing touches on. The big engine and train will head toward Belle­vue after noon on Friday.

The steam engine stopped in this city last fall while head­ing to and from an East Coast excursion.

On July 20, steam loco­mo­tive no. 765 embarks on one of its busiest excur­sion sea­son in recent his­tory. July through Sep­tem­ber will see the 765 oper­at­ing spe­cial pas­sen­ger trains for Nor­folk Southern’s anniver­sary, host­ing employ­ees and their fam­i­lies across the north­ern routes of its system.

This week­end, the 765 will be giv­ing pri­vate runs between Belle­vue and Bucyrus — a total of five over Sat­ur­day and Sunday.

Lynch said the exact loca­tion of the train in Belle­vue has yet to be set but he believed the engine would have enough down­time for fans to get a good view of the train while in town.

The 765 crew will be stay­ing in on the train. “We have a dorm car with the train,” Lynch said.

After the visit to Belle­vue, the 765 will head to Toledo on Monday.

The cel­e­bra­tion of the Nor­folk South­ern Anniver­sary cor­re­sponds with the 40th Anniver­sary of the Fort Wayne Rail­road His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety, Lynch also pointed out. He too agreed that the 765 has a dis­tinc­tive whis­tle, and it is easy to pick out when it rolls into a community.

No. 765 will tra­verse over 4,000 miles in ser­vice of Nor­folk South­ern and the Soci­ety is encour­ag­ing the pub­lic to expe­ri­ence the loco­mo­tive in 2012 by offer­ing a spe­cial mobile appli­ca­tion for iPhones and Android phones and by pub­lish­ing the 765’s full sched­ule online.

For more infor­ma­tion visit www.fortwaynerailroad.org.

Posted by Becky Brooks on Jul 17 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.