By Eric Berger
WINNIPEG, Manitoba — Once again a railroad museum is scrambling to find a new home after receiving an eviction notice. This time it is the Winnipeg Railway Museum, a fixture in Union Station there for three decades. The final day of operation is December 31, 2021.
The museum’s locomotive and equipment are on and around Track One and Two, which are soon to undergo upgrade work by station operator VIA Rail. While the eventual use of the space by VIA was expected due to its inclusion in the station master plan, the request to vacate came sooner than anticipated. The search for a new home was underway in November.
“This may take some time but, when we can, we hope to display our collection of railway artifacts to the people of Winnipeg once more,” said Gary Stempnick, president of Midwestern Rail. He said they hope to find another location in or near the downtown area.
The collection includes the historically significant Canadian Pacific 1, The Countess of Dufferin. A 4-4-0 American type, she was built by Baldwin in 1872 as Northern Pacific 21 for $9,850. Five years and 119,362 miles later, the engine was sold for $5,600 to railway contractor Joseph Whitehead. With great fanfare, she arrived in Winnepeg on a barge, already under steam so her whistle could sound along with that of the steamboat Selkirk, becoming the first locomotive in the western provinces of Canada.
The locomotive spent 20 years on CP before being sold to a lumber company in British Columbia in 1897. Upon retirement in 1911, she was purchased and presented to the City of Winnipeg, where she was placed in the park in front of its newly completed Union Station the following year. The Countess was cosmetically restored to its original appearance in 1970 and moved to another park. She returned to Union Station in 1993, becoming the centerpiece of the new Winnipeg Railway Museum.
Diesels are represented by Canadian National 1900, a GMD-1 restored in the green and cream paint scheme worn when delivered in 1958, the first of just 18 built with B-B trucks and steam generators. Other gems in the museum collection are Winnipeg Hydro 4, an early 30-ton center cab built by the Davenport Locomotive Works in 1927 as a gas-electric and later dieselized; a Mack B-1 Railbus built in 1922 for Northern Pacific which Winnipeg Hydro operated from 1929 to 1962; and a 1946 Packard rebuilt by CP to run on rails.
Though optimistic about reopening, Stempnick is less certain about how long it might take and urged people to visit the museum before January 1. The date when the exhibits will be moved out of the building has not been set, but their emergence may provide the first opportunity in many years to photograph them in sunlight.
