1 November 2008
Caboose Confusion Clarified
Grand Bay-Westfield New Brunswick - It is
now clear that Grand Bay-Westfield's little caboose will be making its new home in Edmundston.
This week there was some question of whether that city or the nearby town of Saint Quentin was receiving the gift of the 1930's
artifact.
Joanne Berube-Gagne, executive director of the Edmundston-Madawaska Tourism Office, said the town of Grand
Bay-Westfield did, in fact, transfer ownership of the friendly caboose to her tourism association two weeks ago, with
support of Edmundston's mayor and council.
Now intense planning is going into getting the railcar to its new location about 350 kilometres away.
"It's costing a fortune to bring it to Edmundston," she admitted. She said the railcar will have to be lifted and moved from
its site in Grand Bay-Westfield, and because it is too high to travel by truck and flatbed under highway overpasses, she
is negotiating with CN Rail now to have it come on a railway flatbed.
Berube-Gagne said while the caboose will have slight modifications made to it once it reaches its new home, for the most
part it will look much the way it does sitting in Grand Bay-Westfield.
"We will take good care of it," she said. "We're very excited."
Berube-Gagne explained there has been a certain enthusiasm in both her city and the town of Saint Quentin to find
cabooses to reflect the work being done at their old train stations, both of which hold their community's tourism information centre.
"We're trying to put together this route that will promote all the train stations in New Brunswick," she said.
"That is likely why everyone is trying to find a caboose."
When there was confusion from Edmundston's city hall on whether or not the municipality was getting the Grand
Bay-Westfield caboose, Berube-Gagne said the mix-up came as a result of both Saint Quentin and
Edmundston bidding on a different caboose this past spring that's stationed in the Tide Head area in the northern part of the province.
Saint Quentin was the successful bidder, and within the next couple weeks will have that caboose arrive by flatbed.
In a coincidence, both communities are getting a caboose in the same time-frame for similar projects.
Grand Bay-Westfield's caboose that sits greeting town residents and visitors for more than a decade from its rails on
River Valley Drive has been disconnected from electrical wires and is awaiting its journey to Edmundston.
"We are waiting to find a way to move it here," Berube-Gagne said. "It's an artifact, and very
fragile."
It will be the perfect fit in the community since the caboose and the CP Rail station there were built in the same
time-frame in the 1930s.
"The caboose really mingles well with what we're trying to do here with the CP Rail station and the way trains benefited and
developed the area," she explained.
Currently that story of rail history is told inside the refurbished train station that holds tourism offices for the Madawaska region,
interpretive centre and year-round visitor information centre.
She said when the caboose arrives and is installed, signage will follow naming Grand Bay-Westfield and its place on the
St. John River as the gift giver.
Grand Bay-Westfield Mayor Grace Losier is excited about the new relationship, and despite the distance between the two
municipalities, they are connected by water.
"Edmundston is at the head of the St. John River and we're at the mouth, so we are hoping there can be some shared advertising
opportunities to promote the river system," she said.
And she hopes the caboose will continue to be an educational tool for its new visitors.
"To us, it is so important that it can be appreciated and used in a way to reflect where it came from and the time if came
from," Losier said.
To lend to the enormity of Edmundston's restoration project, Berube-Gagne said her tourism association is also
negotiating to bring a second caboose from nearby Saint-Jacques to the city.
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