Keepin' it Rail

You know what's awesome about living in a new city?

The hidden treasure.

No,I'm not living in the Caribbean, so there are no doubloons or rubies stuffed into a chest buried beneath the ground (that I've found so far) but there are the metaphorical sort.

Like the Saskatchewan Railway Museum!

This weekend The Girlfriend and I were looking for activities to do, and she suggested that we hit the internet to find entertainment. Like some god-given sign of a good-time, she instantly discovered the Railway Museum! Lo-and behold, it was just a quick drive outside Saskatoon.

Neither of us really knew what to expect, and after a couple wrong turns we found our way to a farmer's field with some trains in it.

Literally.

Then the good times began!

It starts off with a train ride on this yellow unit below. We rode the "Gang-car" down to the station at the back end of the museum, and you walk all the way back to the beginning.

Below you can see "The End of the Line" and the tour guide. Everyone wandered off as she was giving the start of the guided tour, mid-speech actually. One woman was left awkwardly paying attention to her the rest of us wandered off in different directions.
There's a few really cool relics from railway history here actually. Here's the mobile power generator.

I didn't read too closely, but from what I recall, this was a generator that was moved out to locations to provide power to an entire rail construction process. To me, it was mind-blowing that something this gigantic and powerful was hauled from site-to-site well before electricity was introduced to every town and home in Canada.

Here the equivalent of today's city buses.

I got a real kick out of the old ads

Here's a tidbit I learned about my girlfriend while on this visit as well: She's never seen a gopher.

I grew up on a farm where gophers ran across the front lawn daily. I can remember going with my father and my older brother while they shot gophers in fields. To be truthful, I usually swerve on the highway to hit gophers, and I even went and shot at them during spares in high school.

Gophers are everywhere! I never thought that someone would have never seen one. So, I took a photo to commemorate the occasion. Can you spot the gopher in this photo?

My girlfriend asked what me what exactly a gopher was, which got me thinking that I don't really know what they are. To explain it simply, I said, "Gophers are...gophers. They're like squirrels without the tails, or like rats who dig holes."

She thought they were cute.

Here's a train engine dedicated to plowing tracks. You'd hitch this up to the front of a train and plow the tracks as you go.
I wandered my way up to the top of one. I don't think I was supposed to be up there, but that's the excitement of the railway museum I guess.

Then there was this old railway map from CN Rails, I found Grande Prairie on it, before there were any of the major roads that are today. You can also see Highlights like Whitecourt and Dawson Creek on there.
And then I found the hometown of Pierson on there! Like many of the small towns in Manitoba, Pierson was a regular stop for the rails.

And finally, here's the last photo we took. This is pretty accurate to what my day to day life at work is nowadays.
So if anyone needs to know, this is what I look like at my new job in Saskatoon: I yell at people at the phones all day while sitting at a switchboard. So if the railroads need a new person to work their old timey switch boards, I could do that too.

All in all, the Railway museum was awesome. Its the most hands-on museum I've ever been to. I'm not that big into trains, but for anyone who likes Canadian history, or trains, this is an awesome stop!

The Doobie Brothers - Long Train Runnin'