Click on each picture for a closer look!
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The Huntsville and Lakes of Bays Railway is a wonderful small railway which operates in Huntsville, Ontario. Among its rolling stock are the steam locomotives and open passenger cars used by the original railways to move passengers from one set of Muskoka lakes to another. This year, the railway is not operational due to reconstruction work at an adjoining community centre in preparation for the G8 Summit to be held at the nearby Deerhurst Lodge in June of 2010.
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This summer, they are also cleaning up their area as they rebuilt their rail yard. As part of this effort, they generously invited the TRHA to examine their stockpiles of railway artefacts and choose what we might wish to transfer to our museum. As we see in the pictures above, Michael Guy led an expedition to fetch what we felt was valuable for our use. The parts acquired also included two speeder axles complete with wheels and bearings, a functional 35 ton x 5-inch lift screw jack, three non-functional but restorable fifty-ton jacks, a complete two-wheel CNR baggage cart, a small locomotive headlight and and assortment of small “will come in useful someday” stuff that no museum should be without.
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On Saturday, after we unloaded close to a ton of this rusty stuff, our Saturday crew proceeded to clean and assemble the crossing signal mast shown in the photos below, taking it down to bare metal and sound paint with angle grinders. They then applied two coats of aluminum paint. The result was excellent. One of our TRHA crew’s relations was a signal maintainer so he was able to advise us on the refinishing of the black bits which were always just flat-black paint. The crossing signal is now ready for duty in Roundhouse Park.
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Out in Roundhouse Park itself, a TRHA paint team added two yellow safety stripes along the platforms surrounding the miniature railway tracks much like subway platforms have. Another TRHA volunteer beavered away on miniature switch work in the machine shop.

Posting and pictures by Michael Guy
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