It has been a very long 3 days for the Niagara Railway Museum crew.? Members have spent many hours over the past week preparing the site for visitors to our first ever open house.? Grass & weeds were cut down, the shop was swept up (numerous times!) equipment was cleaned up as much as possible, along with being moved into display position.? While we don’t have an exact figure, we believe attendance for the 3 days was around 120-140 people, which for our first time, was pretty decent.? We had nothing but positive comments and well wishes.? We even gained new members because of it.? On Saturday night, July 3rd, we held a small night photo shoot at the shop, featuring our steam and diesel locomotives.? this was more of a test run to see what we could do.? The end result was quite well done, and my thanks to Jason & Louis for taking time to set up the lights for the shoot.? Dan Lint from our neighbour Border City Castings was good enough to bring his tractor out Friday morning to move 46 ahead for

display, and the Plymouth outside.? He also returned Sunday to move both locomotives back to thier normal positions in the shop.? My thanks to Dan for helping us out with the equipment move.? I also had my Fairmont M19 up and

running, despite damage from the vandalism attacks 3 weeks ago.? The car ran very well over the short stretch of track

we’ve constructed, and was well recieved by those that went for the short ride.

All in all it was a very good 3 days, and was very beneficial in gathering information from visitors, and even from neighbours that came over to see what was going on.? All the comments were positive, and while we didn’t have a lot on display, the open house was a success.? I send my thanks to all the dedicated NRM members who came out to help over the weekend, Dan Lint for the tractor, Louis Nigro for helping to arrange the tractor, and the lights for the night photos of 46.

Cogeco Cable 10 here in the Falls for doing 2 great stories about the Museum and the open house, and of course, no open house is complete without you, the visitors who came out and supported us in this event.

Keep an eye on the website, as there is still one more open house planned, likely for September sometime, when we hope to be further along with the building, and have most of our equipment on site.? As always, we are looking for people interested in helping?with equipment restoration, track construction, building maintenance, etc, and work sessions are usually held Wednesday’s & Saturdays, but can be changed to other days with some notice.

Ken Jones Jr.
President
Niagara Railway Museum