People spending their summer days at Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park will not be hearing Little Prince’s iconic steam whistle nearly as often this summer.
Canada’s shortest passenger railway will only be operating eight hours a week this year – from noon to 8:00 on Thursdays.
“It really comes down to a shortage of funds,” explained Exploration Place CEO Tracy Calogheros. “We can’t allow the museum to be at financial risk by operating a city asset without enough money to cover all the days.”
Calogheros said she has never seen the train run for a full season for under $120,000 – the only committed funds to the railway are $25,000 from the city and whatever money the train earns in a year – “usually around 30-grand.”
Since it took over the train in 2012, the museum has always footed the rest of the bill.
After the major renovation and expansion the Exploration Place underwent during the pandemic, she said that is not an option this season.
In order to return to a normal train schedule, the museum would need a “significant sponsor.”
Another expense, Calogheros said they need to build another train shed, saying “it is absolutely not safe for humans to be working in that space, not to mention what it is doing to that unique artifact.”
“The city needs to find enough money to build a building, we need enough money to operate it on a regular timeframe during the summertime, and the museum and the city are working really closely together to try and make that happen,” she said.
The Little Prince train is a part of Prince George and Northern BC’s history – according to the Exploration Place, the steam engine was built in 1912 and was present when the last spike of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway at Fort Fraser was sent into the ground.
It is the last of its kind still in use, the others that worked on the railway were all scrapped after they were no longer needed.
The train returned to the tracks in Prince George in 1978, missing only a handful of years since.
For more information on the train’s history, click here.
“We are hopeful that we will be able to find a sponsor this summer and be able to increase our hours, but in the short term Thursday nights in the park are going to be a blast,” Calogheros said.
Any person or organization who may be interested in becoming that sponsor is being asked to reach out to the Exploration Place at [email protected].
On top of the weekly Thursdays, the railway will also run on Father’s Day, Canada Day, and Thanksgiving.
Little Prince’s first journey around the track will be on May 25.
For more information on the Exploration Place, click here.