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Field Trip: West Coast Railway Heritage Park – Part 7

Click on each image for a closer look!

Continuing my reporting on what I learned from visiting the West Coast Railway Associations terrific museum in Squamish, B.C., I now turn to their collection of passenger cars many of which are used as museum display cars. A few are in great shape and continue to be exhibited as they appeared at the end of their service. Some have been meticulously restored and will be described in another TRHA News item. Some of them were originally part of museum trains which crossed the country at special times in our history such as the Canada’s Centennial year in 1967. Other cars are filled with displays of small artefacts.

In the image at the lower left, an old computer has been interfaced to a sounder connected to a railway telegraph system that they have set up to interpret the importance of telegraph in our railway history. In the middle image below there is a display of artwork from a painter of note who donated his collection seeing their museum as an ideal home for it.

Finally in the lower right image, we find an extensive HO scale model railroad system built into one of their passenger cars by a widower who had moved to Squamish and spent a year and a half building it. The design is quite interesting as it consists basically of a layout that occupies about 2/3 of the width of the passenger car but has alcoves built in at regular intervals to provide lots of viewing area. It is difficult to photograph because of all of the glass however.

Posting and pictures by Russ Milland

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