As visitors from Orleans, France, toured the Chance Rides plant in west Wichita this spring, they spotted a familiar sight: the same kind of miniature train engine that pulled kids around a park in their hometown for decades.
“I would say all natives of Orleans, from the ’50s to 2000, wore their pants out on it,” said Lauren Dosimear-Herry, one of the Orleans residents visiting Wichita on a Sister Cities trip.
Around the world, millions of kids and adults have ridden miniature trains and thrill rides produced here. The story of how that came to be is the story of two families — the Chances and the Ottaways.
The connection between the two goes back to the 1930s, when Geraldine Chance married Herb Ottaway. Geraldine’s father, Gerald, was the local Indian Motorcycle dealer, and Herb was an avid cyclist.
To make ends meet during the Great Depression, Gerald and Herb built kid-sized, gasoline-powered race cars that they toured Kansas with during the summer. Eventually, they established a permanent summer spot for their business in Manitou Springs, CO, near Pike’s Peak. The attractions also included a miniature train Herb Ottaway had restored and a miniature motorcycle on which Gerald’s son, Harold, offered rides. “On a good day, they could make $100, and that was a lot of money in the ’30s,” said Gerald’s grandson, Dick Chance.
By the early 1940s, Herb Ottaway, his brother (also named Harold) and father, Lester, were building miniature steam-powered trains in a shop on North St. Francis. Harold Chance, fresh out of the Army, went to work for them in 1946.
The Ottaways also ran a small amusement park called Joyland, located at the corner of Central and Washington. In 1949, they opened the much bigger Joyland on South Hillside that became one of the region’s biggest attractions. The Ottaways let Harold Chance install and operate the park’s train. Business was so good — he’d carry 5,000 passengers on a Sunday — that he made back his investment in two years.
After five years, the Ottaways traded the train manufacturing business to Chance in exchange for the Joyland train operation. While his sister’s marriage to Herb Ottaway didn’t last, Chance always thanked the Ottaways for his entry into the amusement ride business.
After some initial struggles, Harold Chance’s company produced its biggest-selling product of all time in 1961: the C.P. Huntington Train, gasoline powered and modeled after a real Civil War-era train. The company went on to make more than 400 of them. (The Orleans train was an earlier Ottaway model sent to France in the 1950s in something of a publicity stunt.)
Chance also moved to its current location on Irving south of West Kellogg at this time. Starting in 1963 with the Trabant — a spinning, tilting ride that a young German had invented — Chance produced a steady stream of popular rides that became a staple of carnivals and amusement parks across the United States, including the 1965 Skydiver, 1968 Zipper, 1972 Rok-N-Rol and 1974 Yo-Yo. One of the most unusual Chance products was designed by Herb Ottaway — a gasoline-powered pogo stick called the Hop Rod. It did not sell.
Harold summed up the strategy behind successful thrill rides in an interview with the Wichita Eagle, saying, “You’ve gotta really scare people to death,” and, “When they get on they have to scream.” The innovation that set Chance apart was Harold’s idea to mount the rides on trailers, greatly decreasing the time it took to set up and dissemble them at each stop.
In 1971, Chance acquired the Allan Herschel Co., the world’s largest amusement ride manufacturer (it made the former Joyland carousel now in use at Botanica), and assumed that title itself for a number of years. It’s still the largest U.S. manufacturer.
Dick Chance took over upon Harold’s retirement in 1985, having grown up in the family business. “I have probably drilled a million holes in my life,” he said in a recent interview. He expanded the company’s portfolio to include transit buses, theme park rollercoasters and observation wheels, the reason for the 100-meter-high roof on part of its plant (the company assembles even larger wheels on location for clients).
The recession of the early 2000s forced the company into bankruptcy. It emerged with about a third of its previous 400-person workforce. About 130 people work there today.
Dick Chance retired in 2023, the same year the company was acquired by a Missouri-based private equity firm. He said the sale satisfied his top priority, to “continue the legacy Chances Rides long after I’m gone.” He recently moved to Florida, where he often runs into old business contacts. “They can buy me a drink now,” he joked.
The Ottaway family, meanwhile, sold Joyland in 1975, and the theme park closed for good in 2006. Herb Ottaway’s son, Jerry, said he still gets stopped three or four times a week by someone who recognizes his last name and its connection with Joyland. His family now owns the Carousel Skate Center on West Street, a successor of Joyland’s old skating rink. Jerry plans to fire up an old Ottaway miniature train there this summer.
“I guess it’s entertaining people. That’s the only business I’ve ever been in,” he said.
