22 November 2010

The Little Town That Could

Ogema Saskatchewan - When something goes missing, it drives folks batty in Ogema, a lost-and-found town if ever there was.
 
In the late 1960s, it was the CPR railway station, demolished to leave an annoying gap along the rails at the south end of Main Street. At a farmyard near Simpson was a twin of the town's 1912 original, likely the only one left in Canada, but in use as a granary. Ogema bought the depot in 2002, moved it 280 kilometres south, and picked up the hammers, saws, and paintbrushes. Like other towns with stations converted into libraries or drop-in centres, Ogema soon had itself a railway museum.
 
Yet something was missing. A passenger train. OK, fine, and this is exactly the attitude that makes Ogema, a town of only 320, one of Saskatchewan's truly cool communities, they'd go out and get one. And now they have.
 
In North Conway, New Hampshire, USA, sits a locomotive, and in Gettsyburg, Pennsylvania, USA, a vintage passenger car, both of which are to be hauled roughly 3,000 kilometres to Ogema in the next few months, coupled on the rails, and reborn as Saskatchewan's only tour train.
 
Serving points along the community-owned Red Coat Road & Rail, a 115-kilometre section of track from Pangman to Assinboia, the little train will sport the emblem of the new Southern Prairie Railway on its travels both deep into Saskatchewan history and through stretches of landscape never seen by highway motorists. Plans are to have the train running by next summer, with a full summer slate of special excursions in time for Ogema's centennial celebrations in 2012.
 
An old joke says that you know you're from Saskatchewan when your town buys a Zamboni before it buys a bus. Purchasing a train is another matter altogether. According to Mayor Wayne Myren, it pays to shop around. Bargains can be found. "It's amazing that when you get into the railway heritage circles, what you can find out there."
 
Ogema found, and bought:
 
·  For $17,000, a GE 44 Tonner. Built in 1947, the 4-axle locomotive with a centred cab and V-8 Caterpillar diesel engines front and rear has a transportation history mostly as a switcher, lugging parts of trains around rail yards. Both a puller and a pusher, the Tonner is ideal for back-and-forth runs along the Red Coat shortline, says Myren, and just the right size for a fledgling tour company. Previous owner Conway Scenic Railroad itself only listed the Tonner for sale after expanding to larger engines.
 
·  For $15,000, a 70-passenger car, the first of what Ogema plans someday to be two or three units. Built in 1922, the coach with its maroon siding and black rounded-edge roof looks every bit the conveyance that moved people around the Prairies until the advent of reliable, all-season highways. Antique passenger cars are in something of a surplus since a downturn in American train tourism during tough economic times.
 
Total cost:  $32,000, less than the price of new SUV. But there's always a catch, of course. For Ogema it's the cost of bringing home the engine and car by rail transport, projected to be as much as $50,000 for each, yet another test of the town's resolve to see through a dream. "One thing we learned long ago in Ogema is that you can sit around and talk, and sit around, and talk, but if you want to see a project done, at some point you have to stick your neck out," says the mayor. A campaign is underway for contributions, which Myren would gladly accept from anywhere in Saskatchewan, be it cash, a pledge, or perhaps the few seconds it takes to click a computer mouse while sipping a crisp, cool, Pepsi. On-line voting ends 31 Dec 2010 on the best new community idea for a sponsorship from the soft drink company (Pepsi Refresh Project - To Help Bring Economic Stability to Rural Saskatchewan), and Southern Prairie Railway currently sits 23rd of 298 nominated contestants vying for the top prize of $100,000.
 
With the train on its way, now starts the fun part of planning trips. Not that the scenery along the Red Coat isn't reason enough for an excursion, says Myren. "I've lived here all my life and I'm still surprised at all there's to see once you get back behind those hills." Wildlife watchers will get an eyeful, of foxes, of antelopes, of eagles, and history buffs won't be disappointed, either when viewing stretches of countryside exactly as it was seen by pioneers or when passing by some of the province's last few wooden grain elevators. The centrally located train tour should help knit together many other southern attractions, Myren says, such the city casinos, the Moose Jaw spa, Moose Jaw's transportation-theme Western Development Museum, community museums in Willow Bunch, Bengough, Weyburn, Assiniboia, and guided tours out of Coronach into the wonders of the Big Muddy Badlands.
 
And that's not to forget all the previous losts and founds of Ogema. The addition this year of a Northwest Mounted Police barracks brings the count to 30 old stores, schools, churches, and shops restored and assembled as a 15-acre antique village at the town's Deep South Pioneer Museum. With a train departing from the railway museum, Ogema has positioned itself as the west's geographical extension of Pier 21, Canada's National Museum of Immigration on the harbour front of Halifax.
 
"Pier 21 bills itself at the final destination for immigrants to Canada," says another tour train organizer, Carol Peterson. "Well, truth is, for the prairie settlers it wasn't their last stop. Now we can show what those same immigrants found when they arrived in Saskatchewan."
 
Remember your toy train set at the foot of the Christmas tree? When people in Ogema talk of all the possibilities of their new train, the giddiness is much like that of children on 25th December.
 
Star-light tours, wine-and-cheese junkets, hikes into the countryside from railside stops, Peterson rattles off the ideas as fast as the proposals seem to be coming from people, a chocolate lovers' excursion, party charters, pitch-fork fondues, sunset watching.
 
For Saskatchewan, the one province that more than any other part of Canada relied upon trains for its settlement and its livelihood, the idea of now putting recreation and relaxation on the rails would seem a natural progression.
 
That shortline train tours haven't happened in the province until now is real curiosity.
 
Sometimes it takes an Ogema.
 
Lost:  One past.
 
Found:  One future.
 
Ron Petrie.