For the second time this year, the Little Prince has been decommissioned.
The train in Lhelidli T’enneh Memorial Park uses a wood-fired engine. Amidst the current weather conditions, Exploration Place CEO Tracy Calogheros says there’s too high a risk to run the Prince.
“The city takes such great care of the grass, it’s all quite wet, but it’s that adding to the air shed issue and you don’t want to wind up with a spark on the wind that could get across into LC Gunn Park or something.”
Until now, the Exploration Place had never once shut down the train during tourism season. The train sat idle during the latter third of July, a period which cost up to $15,000 in lost passenger fairs. Calogheros knows stopping it again means further losses.
“We’ll get through our season and we’ll look at what the numbers look like at the end of the season but our first concern can’t be the revenue coming in at this point.”
Looking ahead, Calogheros hopes to have the Little Prince back on the tracks next week.
“It’s unfortunate. Everybody loves the Prince and it’s a shame to shut him down but we may look at running later into September when things cool off and there are fewer air quality issues.”