CORNWALL – A day after Cornwall’s Locomotive #17 faced a vote on its future, a Smiths Falls railway museum is interested in giving it a home.
Coun. Elaine MacDonald has shared that Graeme Roy, vice president of the Smiths Falls Railway Museum of Eastern Ontario, has made an “exploratory call” to look at giving the locomotive a home in its 10.5 acre park.
This is the same organization that donated a railway bell to the City of Brockville after theirs was stolen from outside the Brockville Railway Tunnel.
“They have space for the locomotive, are aware of and appreciate its history as a component of the Cornwall Street Railway system” and “have willing members who would refurbish it,” MacDonald wrote in a letter distributed to city councillors.
Council voted 7-4 yesterday against a motion to try selling or donating the historic piece before scrapping it. The budget had $100,000 set aside for the Locomotive #17 restoration project from 2017 and was facing a further $52,000 to complete the restoration and relocation, possibly to a site outside the Cornwall Civic Complex.
The word of council’s discussion, which including extensive coverage on Twitter by Cornwall Newswatch, prompted the Smiths Falls museum to reach out, MacDonald shared with reporters.