Heritage Park Railway Days

Posted by & filed under , .

Thank you again to Heritage Park for hosting SALUG at their Railway Day’s, which was held on September 29th and 30th.

The members of SALUG created a 15′ x 40′ display that was rich with both city themes as well as themes from our Western Heritage, including LEGO® steam engines! The city core included Andrew’s ever-famous LEGO® C-Train stopping at various stations downtown Calgary, which (if one looked carefully) was being over-run with “comic” characters such as Spiderman®!

Glen also impressed both children and adults alike with outstanding representations of heavy machinery. The functioning round table that fed in to the roundhouse by Mike was outstanding in detail and caused many people to stop in their tracks, causing a slight traffic jam. The functioning round table that Heritage Park was demonstrating outside provided a level of realism that was mutually beneficial. The amazing downtown buildings and scenery from Daryl and Albert were much appreciated and made the display fill in perfectly; additionally, Daryl’s downtown core that hid the two return tracks of the train as it came around was also a highlight – on more than one occasion, one could hear children saying, “It’s back there!” or “The train is coming from behind the building around the corner…”

Rudy provided a replica of the 1880’s CPR Calgary Railway Station, closely matching the replica that Heritage Park also built at the entrance of the park. The sight of Indiana Jones (not historically accurate) coming out of the railway station made many children squeal in delight.

Thank you to the members who put countless hours building the various buildings and structures, the some sixty man hours it took to set up and another additional dozen to tear down, and to the Meccano specialist (Bruce) to our North who supplied some original Singer Sewing machine oil to quiet down one of our noisy train motors. Thanks as well to The Dispatcher for generously making available Digital Command Control to SALUG at reasonable costs.

More photos from Railway days can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/21038096@N02/