Discovered! The Joyland 65

A New Home

In 1950, the Joyland 65 came to the place it would call home for the next 55 years. Harold and Herb Ottaway, owners of Joyland Amusement Park in Wichita, Kan., purchased the engine with an idea to create an antique engine association, and they did just that. In 1951, the Antique Engine and Thresher Assn. was formed, with Kenny Reynolds, Lyman Knapp, Chady Atteberry, E.C. "Big Mac" McMillan, R.G. Langenwalter and the Ottaway brothers as its founding members.

As many of you may remember from Chady's story in the January/February 2004 issue of Steam Traction about Joyland Park, the shows were a huge success, with Big Mac resurrecting the Case Incline demonstration, as well as having many of the early steam legends in attendance. It was at the 1953 show that the Joyland 65 made its indelible mark on the landscape of steam traction engines.

To hear Chady tell the story of that fateful year is to hear of a great rivalry between gentlemen who had blood in their eyes and and a steam throttle in their hand. A prony brake was built in time for the show, and such steam greats as Justin Hingten, Louis David and Uncle Jake Yoder made pulls on their engines that would make even the oldest threshermen green. It was here that Chady's able hand at firing and preparing an engine for a big pull was made obvious to all. In one afternoon, with the steam world watching, Chady fired the Joyland 65 to a record-setting pull of 112 HP on 150 pounds of steam at 250 RPM. Now you may be saying that this is simply impossible, but with a factory Baker valve and a roaring inferno in the firebox, I would imagine anything was possible back then. Chady still gets a glimmer in his eye when he tells the story.

To grow the legend of the Joyland 65 even more, and to provide an attraction for the masses, an exhibition of Steam versus Diesel was created by the Ottaways - a great tug of war, to be held between the Joyland 65 and an IHC TD-14 crawler tractor. Thousands gathered to see this feat take place, and the two machines put on an incredible show.

Year after year until 1960, the Joyland 65 and the rest of Harold's collection of nine Case engines put on memorable shows. But just as fast as the show had grown, so too did the show fade into memory and legend after the Ottaways sold the park to Stan in 1961.

Since the Joyland 65 was such a staple of the Joyland Park experience, Harold sold the engine with the park. From 1961 until a cool fall day in 2003, the engine sat. For 42 years, she lay sleeping, in and amongst 50 years of retired and obsolete amusement park rides, keeping watch over a graveyard of sorts inside the old roundtop barn. Year by year, the Joyland 65 faded further into mystery, and as time takes us all closer to the great reunion in the sky, many of the men who had known and witnessed this engine in its heyday were slowly passing on. But Chady Atteberry remembered. And when the time came he asked the right question of the right man, and we were granted a chance to view the engine, up close and personal.