A piece of local history has rolled back into town, setting up shop at the Timmins Museum: National Exhibition Centre.
“We’ve acquired an original ONR (Ontario Northland Railway) caboose,” said Karen Bachmann, director/curator of the Timmins Museum. “It was a member of the community who approached us and said he had one of these and was looking for a spot to put it.”
As it turns out, the location of the museum has engineered a homecoming of sorts for the caboose.
“The location was a challenge, but we found a spot on the museum grounds for it,” she said. “It’s interesting because the land it is currently sitting on used to be the ONR land in Timmins. This is where the trains used to come. We’re just near where the roundhouse used to be, where they would do the turnaround and have their mechanical shops “If it’s coming home to Timmins, it’s coming home definitely to its spot in Timmins.”
The caboose needed a little bit of work to spruce it up for display, and a local firm carried the freight on the job.
“We had it restored through The Bucket Shop, so the outside is perfectly done,” she said. “We’re waiting for some of the stickers and some of those final prints.”
It is fitting to have the car in front of the museum, Bachmann said, since rail transportation was vital to the growth of the Timmins area.
“I always look at the development of Northern Ontario and how we first started,” she explained. “If it wasn’t for trains, it would have been a really difficult thing to open up the North. That’s what they were using. After the portaging, the trails and walking in, everybody realized if you’re going to be developing a mining community you can’t drag a stamp mill through the snow.
“So, trains were really, really important. The ONR commission realized that. They were working on their lines from North Bay to Cochrane in the early 20th Century and that’s when they decided a spur line to Timmins was absolutely necessary.”
The city’s rail history urged the museum to go full-steam ahead with the project.
“The caboose reminds us how we came here, how we developed this area and some of the things that work around that rail line,” Bachmann said. “We’re looking to have some fun with it.”
Plans to bring the caboose to Timmins have been rolling along since early spring.
“The project started just around when COVID hit,” she said. “It was brought out from Powassan. It moved from Powassan to The Bucket Shop. During the COVID period, they were able to do some work on it.
“When it was finally ready, we thought let’s try to get it in before the snow flies then we can close the project for this year. It happened quite quickly.”
It took a car-load of help to bring the caboose to the museum.
“I have to thank the maintenance department from the City of Timmins because they did a fantastic job and did a lot of the co-ordination in getting things together,” Bachmann said. “There are lots of people to thank: The Bucket Shop, particularly Mr. Woodward, Fire Chief Tom Laughren was really instrumental in this, Gord Deacon at the city as well. A big thank you goes out to all those guys.”
As work continues on the display, plans for the caboose keep chugging along. “So now, in the New Year, we’ll be working on what we’re going to be doing with the caboose,” Bachmann said. “And that we’re keeping under wraps for the moment. There’s a lot of different things we’ll be looking at and we’re finalizing our plans.
“But we’ll have a great celebration for the opening of our caboose.”
