Weekend Report: A busy weekend despite variable weather!

Click on each image for a closer look!

This weekend again saw our miniature railway in full operation as usual with hundreds of riders enjoying a trip around Roundhouse Park. On Saturday afternoon, the child actors participating in the Railway Children Production enjoyed a special barbeque held just for them with our TRHA volunteers helping out with the cooking and providing them with rides around the park as well.

Our work party this weekend was a small one but they were quite productive working on a number of projects:

• Finalizing the frame design for the rolling stock signs
• Began building the first of the signs to interpret our locomotives and rolling stock
• Starting the rebuild of an old CP boxcar ladder
• Clean-up and sorting of the items brought from the machine shop into TRHA storage boxes
• Building a new storage module for brooms, extension chords, and ropes
• Cleaning and re-organizing the working material in the caboose

The pictures shown here capture the work party in action inside the Roundhouse. The last photo shows the latest addition to the signage around the park which helps visitors find the growing number of attractions that we have to offer.

Derek Boles shares with us an interesting story about an encounter last Saturday:

“Last year we were visited by John C. Clarke who worked at John Street his entire working career starting in 1942 and was shop foreman in the 1970's when the excursion steam locomotives were being restored. We had an extensive write-up on him on the website on April 25, 2010. Mr. Clarke showed up today with his grandkids to see the show. He came up to me and started describing what he had done at the roundhouse and, although I had never met him personally (even though I wrote the web item), I said - "I know who you are; you're John C. Clarke "" - and his face just lit up. Seconds after that his family, who had entered Don Sation, found the " Workers " plaque that we had moved inside and started making a commotion when they discovered John's picture and name on the plaque. I think it's fair to say we made his day (and mine actually!). It's stuff like that that makes it all worthwhile.”

Posting by Russ Milland; Photos by James Rasor