The Toronto Railway Heritage Centre Operating Hours
The normal TRHC operating season is from April to October and the museum is now closed to the public until next Spring. From November to March, the miniature railway may occasionally operate on weekend afternoons subject to fine weather and volunteer staff availability. We want to thank the thousands of visitors who rode the miniature railway and donated to the TRHC during our 2011 season. Your support will make it possible for us to continue to celebrate and interpret Toronto's fascinating railway history.
Our hard-working volunteers will be busy all winter restoring our exhibits and preparing new displays for 2012. If you wish to join us in this endeavour, please contact us. We are always looking for new volunteers, no matter what your skill level. A desire to contribute is all that is required.
Virtual Field Trip to The "World's Largest Model Railway"
If you are like myself, you have been deluged with friends and family telling you as a railway enthusiast about the "World's Largest Model Railway". But just in case you haven't, above is the YouTube official video about "Miniatur Wunderland" in Hamburg, Germany. It has been viewed over 4,000,000 times!
This model railway is one of the most successful tourist attractions in Germany. On the 1,300 metre² layout, far more than a thousand trains, aircrafts, cars and ships move about. A wonder of the world in miniature. For more information visit their website by clicking here.
Field Trip: The Age of Steam Roundhouse - Part 3 of 3
Click on each image for a closer look!
We have reported on this exciting development before in Parts 1 and 2 of this field trip report. You actually can not make an actual field trip to the museum as it remains under development and is not open to the public. It is located in Sugarcreek, Ohio.
As reported earlier, the Age of Steam Roundhouse is being developed privately and will will seek to:
Preserve the steam locomotives, historic diesels, passenger cars and other railroad relics in the collection of Jerry Joe Jacobson
Construct a full-scale, operating and realistic roundhouse and back shop to overhaul, repair and maintain Jerry’s rolling stock
Fire-up and operate the steam locomotives on non-passenger carrying freight trains
Display and interpret this railroad heritage for the edification, enlightenment and entertainment of future generations of Americans.
In the accompanying images from their website, their progress is clearly evident. Click here to visit their website and learn more. Click here to read Parts 1 and 2 of our field report which expands further on this great initiative and list the roster of Canadian steam locomotives in their collection.
Next Union Station Tour on Saturday, January 28th at 11:00 a.m.
Click on each picture for a closer look! . The TRHA offers these tours of Union Station on the last Saturday of each month at 11 a.m. Cost is $10 each payable on arrival for the tour. Reservations are not necessary and those interested should meet by the Traveler's Aid counter in the centre of the Great Hall at 10:50 a.m. For more about these tours, click here.
Progress on the new Aquarium between us and the CN Tower
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Under construction across the street from Roundhouse Park is Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada. This will be a 12,500 square metre (135,000 square-feet) world-class family attraction with more than 5.7 million litres (1.5 million gallons) of water depicting marine and freshwater habitats from around the world. It will open in 2013.
Lance Gleich captured these images (see below) of this new Toronto aquarium under construction. Below is an artist's drawing of the aquarium as it will appear from the Roundhouse.
Click here for our previous report on this exciting project! Click here for more information on the aquarium's website.
Posting by Russ Milland, Construction images by Lance Gleich
Weekend Report: Planning for the temporary museum as the snow flies!
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As mentioned in a previous TRHA News report about our recent Volunteer Recognition Event, the TRHA has committed to developing a small temporary museum in Stall #17 to be ready for our upcoming season which will begin in about 20 weeks! This weekend, our volunteers participated in a planning meeting held in the temporary museum space area to finalize the plans for the space and begin to organize the teams of volunteers needed to make it happen. We will share more on our intentions for the museum in further News postings shortly.
Meanwhile Roundhouse Park itself took on a nice wintry mantle of snow as the first serious snow of the season fell in the Toronto area.
Jigsaw puzzles featuring Roundhouse Park - Now and Then!
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If you are like myself, you have done many jigsaw puzzles in the past.Well, now you can work on jig saw puzzles featuring scenes in Roundhouse Park - now and in the past.
Larry Fisher is a renowned artist who has produced many paintings and prints of railway scenes. His well known painting (shown in an image below) of the Roundhouse in the era when we transitioned from steam to diesels is now available as a jig saw puzzle from www.trainparty.com, a company who produces rail-themed merchandise for parties and other uses.This is a 550 piece puzzle which results in a 24 inch by 15 inch replica of the painting. Click here to access the puzzle directly.
At their site they also have a puzzle featuring the famous Bayview Junction, also in a painting by Larry Fisher.Click here to access the puzzle directly.
Many of us own copies of these terrific prints.Both of these prints are still available from Heritage Art Productions.
If you don’t have the patience to wait for your physical puzzle to arrive, you can do another puzzle online at no cost using your computer.It is great fun.But if you do try it, make sure that you have an hour or so to spend to complete it as if you shut down your browser or your computer, you will lose your partially completed puzzle. This puzzle features our vinegar car posing in front of Cabin D.In the image above, you will see the partially completed puzzle to whet your appetitie.We will give you a few days to complete the puzzle before sharing the final result with you.Click here to access the Vinegar Car puzzle.
Thanks to James Rasor for bringing these puzzles to our attention.
Historic Video: Electric railway operations in the Toronto area in the 1920's
Southern Ontario was once criss-crossed with electric interurban railways in various forms which knit the communities together in an era of very poor roads. Andy Panko of the Niagara Division of the Canadian Railway Historical Association has brought our attention to an intriguing 2 1/2 minute video of a trip on one of these. He describes it as follows:
"Here is a historic movie of a Toronto Suburban Railway (TSR) excursion out to Eldorado Park near Streetsville. The TSR ran trains using boxcab #300 and CNR wooden coaches. This Canadian National Electric Line (CNEL) terminated in Guelph, Ontario. The locomotive is Toronto Suburban Railway #300, a 60 ton boxcab electric built in 1925. It later became the Waterloo, Cedar Falls and Northern Railway's #7 in Iowa."
TRHA celebrates the contributions of its volunteers!
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The evening of Saturday, January 7th, 2012 found many of our TRHA volunteers attending a party at Mother Tucker’s Marketplace in Etobicoke, Ontario. The event celebrated the tremendous contributions of the dozens and dozens of volunteers whose contributions have been essential to the success of the Toronto railway heritage Centre. After feasting on the wonderful variety of food on the buffet tables, brief speeches by several of the members of the TRHA Board could only recognize specifically a few of the major contributions.
James Rasor, one of our most active volunteers and now a member of our Board as well, is a professional architect. He presented a model of the temporary mini-museum which we are planning to have ready for our next operating museum. This mini museum will allow us to display a small part of our artefacts until we are able to complete our museum with the rebuilding of the machine shop over the next few years. We will post more information about our mini-museum model and plans shortly.
Field Trip: Acquisition of Stackable Steel Storage Modules
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As we reported recently, Michael and I visited the Niagara Railway Museum in Fort Erie just before Christmas. On Friday, January 6th, Michael, Rodney and myself made a field trip back to the museum with our trailers in tow. The objective was to retrieve 15 stackable steel parts rack modules which were surplus to their needs and bring them to the Roundhouse. With our limited space, being able to store our assets in such stackable modules is a godsend.
On Saturday, January 7th, we delivered the modules to the Roundhouse and promptly unloaded them. Our intrepid TRHA volunteers immediately went to work to grind off the welds on the steel keepers which held the old rotted wooden floor boards in place. For a couple of the units, we couldn’t resist painting the steel frames. We then added some brand new floor boards. The renovated modules look truly handsome!
Posting by Russ Milland; Pictures by Russ Milland and Michael Guy
