NORTH FREEDOM, Wis. — The Mid-Continent Railway Museum’s rescheduled “homecoming” ceremony for its Chicago & North Western Ten-Wheeler, No. 1385, will be held Saturday, July 12, at 4:30 p.m. at the museum in North Freedom.
The starting time for the public event has been moved forward from what had previously been reported [see “C&NW No. 1385’s return …,” Trains News Wire, June 18, 2025].
The event will see the locomotive, built by Alco in 1907, moved onto the museum grounds by the museum’s 1944 Alco S1 switcher, No. 7. A banner breakthrough, speeches by project leaders, and group photo are planned, along with a silent auction for a “No. 1385 Cab Experience,” providing the winner with a private tour of the locomotive, and a chance to fire it with coal and blow the whistle during a future test run.
The locomotive, which will arrive by flat car, is scheduled to be lifted from the flatcar back onto the tracks and paired with its tender on July 14, beginning at 9 a.m.
The event was postponed from its original May date when the museum needed to find another heavy-haul trucking company to move the locomotive from its current location to the spot where it will be transloaded onto a flatcar for the move to North Freedom. The trucking and transload moves are on private property and are not open to the public.
The longing wait will finally be over.
Dr. Güntürk Üstün