This article needs additional citations for verification .(September 2017) |
Established | 1977 |
---|---|
Location | Cranbrook, British Columbia, Canada |
Website |
The Cranbrook History Centre, formerly the Canadian Museum of Rail Travel, or its brand name "Trains Deluxe", is located in Cranbrook, British Columbia, Canada, a city of about 25,000 on the west side of the Rocky Mountains. The city was developed by the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in 1898, as the administrative centre for the railway's "Crowsnest Pass" route. This deep connection with the railway was the driving force behind the founding of the original museum and while the city is still a busy railway centre with Canadian and international freight traffic, the area's rich history extends far back before the railway's introduction and the museum has recently expanded the exhibits to reflect this. Cranbrook was incorporated as a city in 1905 when Cranbrook boomed into the major economic, and commercial centre of the Kootenays.
The museum, opened in 1977, originally focused entirely on restoring and displaying vintage passenger trains - the transcontinental "Deluxe Hotels-On-Wheels". Many of these original features are still present and train culture remains central to the museum, and town's, identity. The original museum emphasized deluxe railway passenger car design in various eras (1886, 1907, 1929, 1936) as well as deluxe railway hotel architecture. The museum is an outgrowth of the Cranbrook Archives, Museum and Landmark Foundation, founded in 1976 with the initial goal of converting an out of service rail car into a local art gallery. The group then discovered that they had unknowingly purchased a dining car from the short-lived Trans-Canada Limited luxury rail line (1929-1931), and the focus of the project shifted to more extensive rail rehabilitation efforts. Founder Garry Anderson was awarded the Order of Canada in 2007 for his efforts in developing the museum. [1]
More recently, the Museum has expanded its focus to embody the larger history of the area, and region. The Cranbrook History Centre now collects, preserves, and displays artifacts and archival records of permanent value to the history of Cranbrook, the East Kootenay, and Canadian rail travel. The collecting scope currently emphasizes three areas:
The Cranbrook History Centre celebrates the rich culture and heritage of the East Kootenay region. Situated in the original 1898 Cranbrook Freight Shed, museum displays include first nations histories, early settler artifacts and information about regional wildlife. Early photographs and timelines honour those who came before and helped build the community we know today.
The Cranbrook History Gallery will showcase topics that highlight the history and culture of our area. This will include local history and folklore, natural history, palaeontology, and Ktunaxa First Nation traditions.
The Paleontology Gallery (featuring a collection donated by Michel Plourde) is the newest edition to the Cranbrook History Centre. It features a number of fossils from the Fort Steele and Burgess Shale regions, as well as a beautiful mural painted by Rosalie Dureski.
The largest exhibition at the Cranbrook History Centre is a collection of 28 railway cars of which 13 are currently available to the public. Highlights of the collection include the 7 cars of the 1929 “Trans-Canada Limited” (a classic “Jazz Era Art Deco” design), 2 cars of the 1907 “Soo-Spokane Train” (a deluxe example of “Edwardian Art Nouveau Elegance”), and the 1927 executive night car “Strathcona” which has housed many VIP guests during its time in service, including Queen Elizabeth II, John & Jackie Kennedy and Sir Winston Churchill.
These remarkable rail travel cars, comprise one of the largest collections in North America, and are in a continued state of restoration. Because of the fragile nature of this irreplaceable collection, our immediate priority is to provide a permanent covered roof to ensure these ‘deluxe hotels on wheels’ are preserved for future visitors and historians alike.
The collections have included:
Instead of the usual mechanical and technological focus that most railway museums employ, the museum emphasizes the social aspects of the railway through travel and design.
It located downtown next to the busy rail yards of the CPR, on Highway 3/95, a major east-west Canadian arterial highway, and a major north-south route linking Banff and Japser National Parks with the Pacific North-West of the US. Cranbrook is about 50 miles (80 km) north of the Idaho and Montana border with Canada and British Columbia.
The back of the Museum has a siding track for excursion trains arrival, with doors into the Museum's large entrance hall from this track. The spectacular "Royal Canadian Pacific" (a high-end excursion train operated by the CPR on a circle route through the Rockies, out of Calgary, Alberta), uses this facility, as well as occasional special excursions of the CPR's famed #2816 restored "Hudson" style steam locomotive.
A 1992 study about the historical significance of the collections was recently updated by the author, Rober Turner, Curator Emeritus of the Royal British Columbia Museum, in which he states that "the museum is unparalleled anywhere in Canada, and is clearly of national as well as international importance".
The Canadian Pacific Railway, also known simply as CPR or Canadian Pacific and formerly as CP Rail (1968–1996), was a Canadian Class I railway incorporated in 1881. The railway was owned by Canadian Pacific Railway Limited, which began operations as legal owner in a corporate restructuring in 2001.
BC Rail is a railway in the Canadian province of British Columbia.
Cranbrook is a city in southeast British Columbia, Canada, located approximately 10 km southwest of the confluence of the Kootenay River and the St. Mary's River. It is the largest urban centre in the region known as the East Kootenay. As of 2016, Cranbrook's population is 20,499 with a census agglomeration population of 27,040. It is the location of the headquarters of the Regional District of East Kootenay and also the location of the regional headquarters of various provincial ministries and agencies, notably the Rocky Mountain Forest District.
A dome car is a type of railway passenger car that has a glass dome on the top of the car where passengers can ride and see in all directions around the train. It also can include features of a coach, lounge car, dining car, sleeping car or observation. Beginning in 1945, dome cars were primarily used in the United States and Canada, though a small number were constructed in Europe for Trans Europ Express service.
Heritage Park Historical Village is a historical park in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, on 127 acres (51 ha) of parkland on the banks of the Glenmore Reservoir, in the city's southwestern quadrant. The Historical Village part of the park is open 7 days a week (10-5) from the Canadian May long weekend through to the September Labour Day long weekend, and then weekends from Labour Day through to Canadian Thanksgiving weekend in mid October. Gasoline Alley Museum and the Railway Café are open year-round. As one of Canada's largest living history museums, it is one of the city's most visited tourist attractions. Exhibits span western Canadian history from the 1860s to the 1950s. Many of the buildings are historical and were transported to the park to be placed on display. Others are re-creations of actual buildings. Most of the structures are furnished and decorated with genuine artifacts. Staff dress in historic costume, and antique automobiles and horse-drawn vehicles service the site. Calgary Transit provides regular shuttle service from Heritage C-Train station. The park opened on July 1, 1964.
The Dominion Atlantic Railway was a historic railway which operated in the western part of Nova Scotia in Canada, primarily through an agricultural district known as the Annapolis Valley.
The Royal Hudsons are a series of semi-streamlined 4-6-4 "Hudson" type steam locomotives formerly owned and operated by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) and built by Montreal Locomotive Works (MLW). The engines were built in 1937. In 1939, King George VI allowed the CPR to use the term after Royal Hudson number 2850 transported the royal train across Canada with no need of replacement. These locomotives were in service between 1937 and 1960. Four of them have been preserved. No. 2839 was used to power excursions for the Southern Railway Steam Program between 1979 and 1980. No. 2860 was used for excursion service in British Columbia between 1974 and 1999, then again between 2006 and 2010.
The Boone and Scenic Valley Railroad is a heritage railroad that operates freight and passenger excursions in Boone County, Iowa.
The South Simcoe Railway is a steam heritage railway in Tottenham, Ontario, north of Toronto. Operating excursions since 1992, it is the oldest operating steam heritage railway in Ontario and features the second oldest operating steam locomotive in Canada.
The Canadian Railway Museum, operating under the brand name Exporail in both official languages, is a rail transport museum in Saint-Constant, Quebec, Canada, on Montreal's south shore.
Fort Steele is a heritage site in the East Kootenay region of southeastern British Columbia. This visitor attraction lies on the east shore of the Kootenay River between the mouths of the St. Mary River and Wild Horse River. The locality, on the merged section of highways 93 and 95, is by road about 17 kilometres (11 mi) northeast of Cranbrook and 230 kilometres (143 mi) southeast of Golden.
A private railroad car, private railway coach, private car, or private varnish is a railroad passenger car either originally built or later converted for service as a business car for private individuals. A private car could be added to the make-up of a train or pulled by a private locomotive, providing privacy for its passengers. They were used by railroad officials and dignitaries as business cars, and wealthy people for travel and entertainment, especially in the United States. They were sometimes used by politicians in "whistle stop campaigns". Pay cars with less opulent sleeping and dining facilities were used by a paymaster and assistants to transport and disburse cash wages to railway employees in remote locations without banking facilities.
The Moyie is a paddle steamer sternwheeler that worked on Kootenay Lake in British Columbia, Canada from 1898 until 1957.
Roundhouse Park is a 17 acre park in the downtown core of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is in the former Railway Lands. It features the John Street Roundhouse, a preserved locomotive roundhouse which is home to the Toronto Railway Museum, Steam Whistle Brewing, and the restaurant and entertainment complex The Rec Room. The park is also home to a collection of trains, the former Canadian Pacific Railway Don Station, and the Roundhouse Park Miniature Railway. The park is bounded by Bremner Boulevard, Lower Simcoe Street, Lake Shore Boulevard West/Gardiner Expressway and Rees Street.
Canadian Pacific 2816, also known as the "Empress", is a preserved class "H-1b" 4-6-4 Hudson-type steam locomotive built by the Montreal Locomotive Works (MLW) in December 1930 for the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). It is the only non-streamlined H1 Hudson to have survived into preservation.
Luxury trains are a premium passenger rail service. Some luxury trains promote tourism in destinations across a region, while others take passengers on a ride through a single country.
George Douglas Pepper was a Canadian artist.
The Lake Erie and Northern Railway was an interurban electric railway which operated in the Grand River Valley in Ontario, Canada. The railway owned and operated a north–south mainline which ran from Galt in the north to Port Dover on the shore of Lake Erie in the south. Along the way, it ran through rural areas of Waterloo County, Brant County, and Norfolk County, as well as the city of Brantford, where it had an interchange with the Brantford and Hamilton Electric Railway. Construction on the mainline began in 1913. The railway began operations in 1916 as a subsidiary of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), which had purchased the line before construction had finished. In 1931, it was consolidated with the Grand River Railway under a single CPR subsidiary, the Canadian Pacific Electric Lines (CPEL), which managed both interurban railways, though they continued to exist as legally separate entities. Passenger service was discontinued in 1955 but electric freight operations continued until 1961, when the LE&N's electric locomotives were replaced by diesel CPR locomotives and the line was de-electrified. In the same year, service on the mainline from Simcoe to Port Dover was discontinued, but the remainder continued to operate as a branchline which as early as 1975 was known as the CP Simcoe Subdivision. The remainder of the line was officially abandoned in the early 1990s, ending almost seventy-five years of operation.
Kuskanook was a wooden, stern-wheel driven steamboat that operated on Kootenay Lake, in British Columbia from 1906 to 1931. After being taken out of service, Kuskanook was sold for use as a floating hotel, finally sinking in 1936. The vessel name is also seen spelled Kooskanook.