PNE Fair display helps families track CN’s past, mark railway's 100th
Credit to Author: Susan Lazaruk| Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2019 01:25:30 +0000
PNE fairgoers can learn more about one of Canada’s oldest companies, CN Rail, at an interactive display set up at the fair this year to celebrate the railway’s 100th birthday.
The family-friendly display gives participants an opportunity to build a futuristic train, listen to recordings of immigrants who rode the train across Canada after landing in Halifax throughout the decades, and to watch drone video taken from trains as they rolled from town to town.
“Until we came here, we didn’t know much about (the railway),” said Davi Gill of White Rock as son Ayden and daughter Corina created trains out of Lego pieces provided in the creative station of the display. “They really learned a lot. It’s pretty neat.”
The display is housed in several different rail cargo cars, painted red and grouped together in a section of the PNE, each with a different theme: people, history, the future, scenery and safety.
“The whole idea was to make it as interactive as possible,” said volunteer spokesman Jim Feeny, a retired CN employee. “And we wanted to recreate the village feel” of a train stop.
In the history car, participants can learn about the various steps in CN’s growth after it was created by an Act of Parliament on June 6, 1919 (it remained a federal Crown corporation until it was privatized in 1995).
Over its network of railways stretching from B.C. to Halifax and south through Chicago to Louisiana, CN each year transports more than $250 billion worth of goods, including resource products and manufactured and consumer goods.
Video in the scenery car shows viewers what it would look like driving into and out of the major stops along the way.
“You can see why our locomotive engineers love their jobs,” said Feeny.
Hannah Greenfield of CN waves from their caboose with Connor Irvine and Maddy Irvine of Vancouver at CN display at the PNE Fair. (Craig Hodge/ PNE Fair photo)
The display includes an opportunity for fairgoers to ride a mini train around the outside of the site, listen to a band from Montreal called the Travelling Trio (Friday to Sunday) and have their family’s photo taken wearing striped overalls.
And children who get their passport stamped at each of the stations are rewarded with a striped, logoed baseball cap.
CN is touring the display across the country and is moving on to Winnipeg next. It has been drawing 1,000 to 2,000 visitors a day in other cities, with a one-day record of 6,000 visitors at the Calgary Stampede.
The company, which replaces 600,000 railway ties a year on its 32,000 kilometres of track because of wear and tear, began planting trees to replace the hardwood trees harvested to create the ties.
Since 2012, CN has planted two million trees, and it will plant 100 trees (in Moodyville Park in North Vancouver) to mark its 100th birthday, said Feeny.
In a CN press release, the company also announced the creation of the CN Vancouver Community Board, which “will provide input on CN’s community investments in the region.”
The board is chaired by former B.C. Premier Christy Clark and will grant funding to local grassroots groups. Last year, CN donated $900,000 to B.C.-based groups, it said.
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