MELFORT—The Melfort and District Museum is interested in acquiring a 1912 Canadian Pacific Railway caboose.
“The caboose is at the [Western Development Museum] in Saskatoon and they put out a call seeing if any museum would like it because they don’t have any storage room for it,” said Gailmarie Anderson, the museum’s curator.
“We think it would be important to acquire it because Melfort was founded in this location because of the railway and we’ve always wanted to have something reflecting that at our museum.”
There’s two obstacles the museum will have to overcome before it can get the caboose.
The first will be to get it to the museum from Saskatoon, which will be costly.
The second is acquiring some track for the caboose to rest on once it’s at the museum. The rail lines that serve Melfort belong to Canadian National, not Canadian Pacific.
While the museum is exploring some options to acquire some track, it also put out a call on Facebook for some help.
“That’s why we put it out there, to see if anybody could help us more in terms of making some connections.”
The museum is also interested in connecting with railway enthusiasts with some knowledge of restoration.
“We did send people to look at it and it’s in pretty good shape,” Anderson said, adding the exterior would need superficial refurbishment, but the interior would require more work.
The museum can be contacted at 306-752-5870.
