The Parks and Recreation Board voted Wednesday to end its relationship with the museum at Forest Park when its lease expires in March. The decision has the backing of Mayor John Ditslear, who was critical of the way the museum has maintained the property. The museum signed its first lease with the city on Jan. 1, 1965.
“The ITM has not shown good stewardship with the resources entrusted to them for more than fifty years,” Ditslear said in a statement. “The City of Noblesville is taking these proactive measures now to protect our residents and our heritage, to ensure Forest Park is cleaned up and to bring the trains back to our community with a new operator.”
Museum Chairman John McNichols claimed the move was part of a strategy by the city to bankrupt the museum and seize its equipment.
"This is just a ploy to disband the organization," McNichols said. "They want to get our equipment and give it to the new Nickel Plate operator. It's a shame the people of Noblesville have to witness this, and I think some politicians are going to pay at the next election."
The museum may not be homeless for long; it signed an agreement to expand to Logansport in July, and Mayor David Kitchell said Wednesday he would seek to make the Cass County city its permanent home.
"I talked to Mayor Ditslear about giving the ITM some extra time to move their assets if they need it," Kitchell said. "We have about three sites that could move into here."
Volunteers at the non-profit museum operated the Indiana State Fair Train and other excursion lines like the Polar Bear Express for decades along the 37-mile Nickel Plate tracks from Indianapolis through Hamilton County. Its Forest Park train yard stores $3 million in equipment, including eight locomotives, box cars and historical artifacts. About 30,000 people visit the museum each year.
But the city has been at odds with the museum since 2016 when the Hoosier Heritage Port Authority ordered the suspension of the popular Indiana State Fair Train because of unsafe tracks. The authority, which owns and manages the tracks for Noblesville, Fishers and Hamilton County, then sought a new operator for the train.
The bad feeling was exacerbated earlier this year when Noblesville and Fishers announced plans to tear up the Nickel Plate line and change it to a greenway south of downtown Noblesville. The city then requested an inspection of the museum by state environmental officials in response to complaints about leaking oil drums.
City officials said Wednesday the inspections of the museum’s train yard found a host of environmental and health hazards. The Indiana Department of Environmental Management and the Environmental Protection Agency found PCBs, and several cars that are believed to contain asbestos, city officials said. The museum also inventoried 1,064 items for waste containment and disposal, the city claimed.
“We expect full cooperation from the ITM to ensure a smooth transition as they finalize their clean-up efforts and move their operations outside of Forest Park,” said Parks Board President Scott Noel.
McNichols said the conditions at the museum are no worse than at an auto garage. "There is no toxic waste," he said.
He also said Noblesville officials told him that the museum couldn't use tracks to move the trains and would have to use trucks. That would make them hard to move, and then the city could take control of the equipment left behind.
City spokesman Robert Harrington said the city doesn't want the trains but wants them cleared out as soon as possible so environmental clean up can begin. He said the museum can move the trains anyway it wants but doubted the tracks were in usable shape.
"We don't want anything. We want remediation to begin so we can see what is safe to go there," Herrington said.
Noblesville and Fishers selected a new operator for the Nickel Plate line earlier this year, the Nickel Plate Heritage Railroad, which will run a Nickel Plate Express excursion train between Noblesville and Arcadia.
