The Ossawippi Express rail cars on Centennial Drive - Date/Photographer unknown.

2 June 2012

Rail Cars Back on Track

Orillia Ontario - The Ossawippi Express rail cars are on the move.
 
A wrinkle in Skyline International's plans to relocate four rail cars to its Port McNicoll development has been ironed out after Tay Township approved the company's re-zoning application 16 May 2012, passing a bylaw to allow the company to restore the rail cars and use them in their $1.7-billion, mixed-used development property.
 
The historic rail cars will once again operate as a restaurant in Skyline's Heritage Park development, alongside a replica of Port McNicoll's train station.
 
"We are really looking forward to bringing (railway) history back to the heritage of Port McNicoll," Skyline CEO Michael Sneyd said Friday.
 
He called the rail cars a "perfect complement" to the S.S. Keewatin, the last remaining Edwardian passenger steamship, which will be arriving home in Port McNicoll 23 Jun 2012 for the first time in 45 years.
 
The former Orillia resident has a history of his own with the heritage rail cars. Sneyd started working at the Ossawippi Express restaurant as a busboy at the age of 15 and continued to work as a server there through his teens.
 
"I spent a lot of very good times there," he said.
 
Sneyd was in the room when his father, Doug, came up with the idea to name the Ossawippi Express dining cars after the train from Mariposa in Stephen Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town. Doug helped owner Jim Allison design the restaurant and menus.
 
The city has been trying to find a home for the rail cars since the April 2010 closure of the Ossawippi Express restaurant. The cars are located on leased city land. The City of Kawartha Lakes, which put in an offer for the cars, dropped funds for the rail cars from its budget in December.
 
"Council is very pleased these cars are being moved and the historic ones preserved," Orillia Mayor Angelo Orsi said Friday. "This was the objective all along and we are grateful we have a positive resolution where they can still be viewed close to Orillia."
 
Skyline paid the City of Orillia $25,000 for security and maintenance before the removal.
 
Sneyd said the company plans to donate another $25,000 to the Stephen Leacock Museum in gratitude to its curator, who had a hand in putting Sneyd onto the rail cars after the Kawartha Lakes agreement fell through. The rail cars were set for demolition if another home wasn't found.
 
"I thought it was a shame to lose this piece of history," Sneyd said.
 
He said renovation of the four Canadian Pacific Railway rail cars will cost about $250,000.
 
All eight rail cars must be moved from their current Centennial Drive location by 18 Jul 2012. The four that will become part of Skyline's development were built in 1913, 1923, 1929, and 1953.
 
Of the four remaining, two will be recycled, and two are being donated, one to the Ontario Electric Railway Historical Association, and one to the Toronto Railway Museum.
 
Kristen Smith.