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Great shot of the Huntsville and Lake of Bays steamers during their interim in Pinafore Park. The Huntsville and Lake of Bays Railway acquired the two from Canadian Gypsum in 1948 through dealer Andrew Merilees, a rail equipment dealer in West Toronto who I had the pleasure to meet personally a couple of times while trucking rail from his Weston yard out to Tom Hollender’s Western Railway Construction in Thunder Bay . The Huntsville and Lake of Bays ran #2 (originally CGC #7) once, but it was too heavy for their tracks and tight curve radii and ended up rolling the rails. It was then stored in a shed and they used #1 (CGC #5) up until the end of operations in 1959. After a few years sitting idle they both were acquired by the Broadbears and put back to work at Pinafore Park for which we shall always be grateful, as I’m sure they probably would have been left to rot and/or sold for scrap otherwise. The little GE was originally from the Bowater Pulp and Paper mill in Corner Brook NL and serves us in our shoulder seasons when ridership is not worth the cost of running steam. Not much has changed with Nos. 1 & 2 except that the cowcatchers are gone in favor of the original pilots. #2 has had its burner upgraded to something that resembles a large paint gun nozzle and runs 4 trips a day Tuesdays through Saturdays in July and August. #1 is waiting for a new boiler as the engineered drawings required for boiler certification are missing (or never existed) and the cost to acquire new ones would be prohibitive for a boiler that needs a couple of cracks in the firebox welded and even then is just barely thick enough in spots to pass muster. #3 is used daily during the operating season, running the trains in the shoulder seasons and hauling the coaches in and out of the shops in steam season. Another acquisition, #4 is a 5-ton gas powered (298 Ford V* with automatic transmission)Brookside that was originally used in the CLC Munitions Plant in Nobel, but although it was used in the past for coach shunting and track inspections it no longer gets much run time.
Is there anything of this left in St. Thomas today?
Great shot!
A couple of corrections to my original comment re #4: it’s a 289 Ford (not 298 of course – anyone who knows anything about Fords would realize that’s a typo) and it’s a Brookville, not Brookside. Brookside were the chocolates I was munching on earlier. Sorry for the confusion!
Marcus, Pinafore Park is still there but no railway.Tennis Courts, splash pads .picnic pavillions etc.Just a very nice city park.
Bill
Ahh… Pinafore Park Railway – where PSTR and OSR got their start..
Just about everyone involved in the early days of both railways was involved in this operation – Larry Broadbent gave an amazing slideshow at the last Copetown show.
Pinafore Park has a lot of history behind it and ahead of it.. that’s for sure..