Progress Report: Don Station and the Miniature Railway

Click on each picture for a closer look!
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On Monday June 29, a meeting was held at Roundhouse Park to deal with some issues that have come up regarding the restoration of the Don Station. Tom Murison and his crew have been hard at work restoring the station and Cabin D, as reported earlier in these news postings.
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One of the first jobs was to pry off the metal siding on the station that was added in the 1930s as shown in the picture at the upper left. As far as we can determine, a brush fire partially burned the station and, rather than replacing the wood siding, the CPR nailed metal siding all around the outside of the building. At first we were considering restoring the station to its appearance with the later siding but since this has been removed the station will be restored to another time period yet to be determined.
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In the middle picture above, we see a piece of wood siding which illustrates some of the stages that the station has undergone. On the far left is the burnt wood. The green colour indicates a period when Canadian National operated the station. Although Canadian Pacific built the station in 1896, in its latter years after the number of passenger trains had dwindled and the operators were mostly involved in servicing CN freight trains. In its final years, CP once again operated the station.
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Three key individuals involved in the restoration of the Don Station are caught on camera in the picture at the upper right. On the left is John Mellow who is consulting on the project and providing valuable expertise. As a young man in the mid-1960s, John was an operator at Don when it was still in railway service. In the middle is TRHA president Orin Krivel. On the right (and apparently the only one of the three who was amused at having his picture taken) is Glenn Garwood, who is the Toronto Railway Heritage Centre project manager for our owners, the City of Toronto.
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In the picture at the lower left, we find the miniature railway track crew hard at work on July 1, Canada Day. From left to right: Richard White, Jason Pelton, Lance Gleich, Jim Gardiner and Dave Fleming. Meanwhile TRHA VP of Operations, Michael Guy, was busy (with his welder's helmet) building some complicated miniature railway trackwork required in order to cross over some standard gauge track as shown in the picture at the lower right.
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Posting and pictures by Derek Boles
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