Four cars ‘write-offs’ after crash but kids’ railway to open: Group

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CN Rail engineer Gary Clark spent nearly six months of his free time building a miniature white caboose.

Now, the rail car is one of four badly damaged when a driver slammed into a miniature railway station that serves as the home of the Sleepy Hollow Railway in Strathroy-Caradoc on Canada Day.

Members of the Strathroy Model Railroad Engineers, the volunteer group that runs the narrow-gauge rail line for kids, spent Tuesday surveying the damage inside the building and cleaning up.

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“We’ve got four cars that are write-offs,” Clark, a member of the group, said during a break from sorting through the wreckage.

But none of the three locomotives, the engines used to haul the train cars along the attraction’s 275-metre track, were damaged because they are kept in another building.

And despite the devastation caused by the long weekend crash – various displays, artifacts and small layouts were damaged or destroyed – the railway will be open on Saturday to coincide with Strathroy Ribfest, a three-day event kicking off Friday.

“Minor little setback today, but we’re going to be up and running Saturday,” Clark said, noting the crash has brought an outpouring of support and publicity for the volunteer-run attraction.

The Sleepy Hollow Railway, previously located in Alexandra Park before it was moved in 2014 to its current location at the Fair Grounds Recreation Complex, is open on Saturdays throughout the summer and funded entirely through donations and public contributions.

“It could be a nickel, a dime or a quarter,” Clark said. “Some people have given $20. If somebody comes up and they’d like to go for a ride but they don’t have any money, that’s fine.”

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Emergency crews responded Monday about 3:30 a.m. to the miniature railway, located at 334 Metcalfe St., where a vehicle had struck the building, Strathroy-Caradoc police said.

Officers located the two occupants of the vehicle and charged a person under the age of 18 with impaired driving. Police also impounded the vehicle and gave the driver an automatic 90-day licence suspension.

Members of the Strathroy Model Railroad Engineers say it appears the vehicle was in the parking lot of the complex when it collided with the miniature station modelled after the former Great Western Railway station house in Strathroy.

“I can’t believe how fast (they) would have been going,” Clark said of the car that ended up inside the station covered in debris. “But it could have been so much worse.”

About 20 rail cars were stored in the building.

Strathroy-Caradoc Mayor Colin Grantham praised the volunteers’ efforts to reopen the railway after the crash and condemned the alleged impaired driving incident.

“It’s a great volunteer organization,” he said of of the Strathroy Model Railroad Engineers. “But what’s terrible news is that impaired driving still happens in our community.”

Clark, who farms wheat, corn and soybeans near Chatham, vowed to rebuild the destroyed caboose.

“It will probably be in the fall,” said Clark, who is getting ready to harvest his wheat crop this month. “It’s a wintertime project.”

dcarruthers@postmedia.com

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