1 August 2010

Empress Offers Trip to Yesteryear

Deb Deans, Lincoln Usher, and Adam Usher board the Canadian Pacific Railway
Empress steam train on Sunday afternoon for a ride from Medicine Hat to Dunmore.

Medicine Hat Alberta - When Earl Morris boarded Canadian Pacific Railway's iconic Empress 2816 steam train Sunday, he was not only taking a trip to the Dunmore area but also a journey into his past.
 
When Morris was a child his father, a railway engineer in Medicine Hat, would let him ride up front with him in steam engines like the Empress.
 
"It's very nostalgic," Morris said as he sat at the bar of the 1930's passenger train, watching the picturesque prairie landscape whiz by.
 
It appears other Hatters were as excited about boarding the Empress as Morris was. All four trips to Dunmore on Sunday were sold out.
 
CP spokeswoman Breanne Feigel attributed the high level of interest to the "romanticism of the rail."
 
"For older generations, it's the nostalgia of coming west by train," Feigel said. "For the young, kids love trains, you can't get away from it."
 
Seven-year-old Lindsay O'Connell said she enjoyed riding on the historic steam train with her father Kevin and sister Claire.
 
"It was fun," Lindsay said about the short trip down the tracks.
 
Her dad was also impressed.
 
"It was wonderful," Kevin said. "It's an incredible opportunity to ride on something so well preserved.
 
The Empress is one of only two operating steam locomotives in North America. Union Pacific owns the other one in the U.S.
 
Editor's Note:  That statement is just plain wrong, Ken. * See the This Month article which does not include the MANY operating steam locomotives in the United States.
 
CP spent the past year conducting maintenance on the steam train to get it ready for the 125th anniversary of the driving in of the last spike of the railway near Revelstoke, B.C.
 
Editor's Note:  Canadian Pacific Railway's Last Spike, which was made of plain iron, not gold, was driven at a place named Craigellachie in Eagle Pass west of Revelstoke on 7 Nov 1885 by Donald Smith, the most senior officer of the comapany present at that time and later to become Lord Strathcona.)
 
The steam train stopped in Brooks for the city's centennial on Saturday. Today, the Empress will visit Taber and Lethbridge.
 
The $6,000 collected from train ticket sales on Sunday was donated to the local Children's Wish Foundation.
 
Ken Gousseau.