In its heyday the Prince Edward Island Railway had hundreds of miles of track, but now the last significant remnant of original rail can only be found at the Elmira Railway Museum in the far eastern end of the province.
The Elmira station was opened in 1912 and was known as the end of the line for those traveling east and was used right up until it was closed in 1972 when Canadian National announced it was leaving Prince Edward Island. The last train in the province left 17 years later and all rails and ties were ripped up.
The early part of the last century was the last period of expansion of the provincial railroad which was marked by an effort to improve passenger comfort. The Elmira station featured waiting rooms for men and women and with the arrival of the train came the telegraph which meant consistent communications in regards to train schedules.
The Elmira yard had five rail spurs, an engine house, a 200 foot coal shed, a barn, bunkhouse and shacks for the conductors and engineers. Since it was the terminus for the eastern end of the Island it was important for the farmers in the area because it enabled them to get their goods to market. In terms of passengers it was not so important.
“I think in its day that in a passenger point of view no (not so important) but in terms of moving goods and so on from the rural area here, certainly it was a significant point of loading goods to take onto the main line,” said David Keenlyside, executive director of the P.E.I Museum and Heritage Foundation.
Three years after the station was closed by CN it was reborn as the Elmira Railway Museum and has undergone extensive renovations and expansion by the P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundation and for the past 11 years in partnership with the Friends of Elmira.
The Friends of Elmira, which is a non-profit organization, has obtained funding to put the rest of the buildings on site. One way has been to hold a strawberry social and the 10th annual was held Saturday at the station.
“We have a model train collection of about 300 models in HO scale that is set up into the shape of Prince Edward Island, we have a large resource library (the model trains and library were donated by the family of Robert Methan) and the Friends of Elmira built the building they are housed in,” said Lynne Morrow, museum site manager.
She explained phase two of development involved obtaining two miniature trains from Barry Maloney in Kildare who built them. The province transferred 16 acres of land to the friends on which to run the trains as well to allow them to build the workshop to house them. In another phase a new gift shop was built.
The newest attraction is a ride on the “wye” which is a triangular system of track which enables trains to be turned around, Keenlyside said.
“There was a turntable here back in the 1930s, but the wye was the most efficient way of turning vehicles around,” he said.
The museum recently bought a speeder that was owned by CN in Quebec to take visitors for a ride on the track to experience the operation of the wye. A speeder is a motorized vehicle that was used by track inspectors and workmen to move quickly to and from work sites.
The rails in Elmira that the speeder uses were left by CN, but they were all overgrown “and it was with significant logistical efforts they were all brought back so it is like the original system that was used here at Elmira,” Keenlyside explained.
The museum is one of the foundation’s seven heritage sites across the province and like the other sites work is continuing in Elmira, he said.
“The growth of our museum system is an ongoing sort of work in progress and the work that you see here has been done over the last seven or eight years with the friends (of Emira) working with the museum and heritage foundation…but the friends have been able to work with the province and federal government in generating funds to build some of the other buildings,” Keenlyside said. “We are continually adding facilities to make it a better experience for people.”
