POSTED: Saturday, August 2, 2008 -- 4:00pm

It's been almost two months and for hundreds, lives and livelihoods affected by the June floods are still far from normal.

But, a sign of hope Saturday as one of the area's oldest attractions gets back on track.

Through a lot of sweat and tears, they keep chugging along.

All aboard is a simple command, but one that hasn't been uttered in North Freedom for quite some time.

It's only drowned out by a whistle. Music to the ears of those who made sure this engine would once again purr.

Mid-Continent Railway Museum General Manager Don Meyer says, "Somethings been going on every day since the flood with people out volunteering."

As passengers climb aboard the 100 year old train museum volunteers need only think back a few months in history to remember their darkest days.

A time lapse on the museum's camera shows how quickly the water rose. Soon a train station and a city were under water.

Meyer says, "We tried to sandbag around the depot to protect it and it got up over the sandbags."

For those living in this small town, the damage was hard to believe. At the mid continent railway museum the tracks were quiet, millions of dollars worth of history unusable.

Two months and dozens of volunteers later this is a historic journey

Museum volunteer Doug Crary says, "It's nice to see the trains running. It makes us feel like we're still alive. It's a lot of work."

With the train once again rolling along for the first time it's a big boost to all the volunteers who spent hundreds of hours making this happen but the damage from the floods was so bad that this is just the beginning.

Conductor Art Oseland says, "Despite we can't go all the way, it's still something that makes everybody feel good about the museum."

It's a trip cut short by a damaged railway bridge, still not safe to pass.

It is a trip with one engine in the lead, the smallest in the museum and the only one volunteers have been able to fix since the flood.

Meyer says, "We've got the little one that could"

A light at the end of the tunnel and a sign of things back on track for a railway museum and a town still chugging along.

The museum's General Manager says for every day the museum has been closed, it's lost 3-thousand dollars a day in revenue.