Vintage ONR caboose finds its way home to the Timmins Museum

Piece of northern history returns to Timmins A piece of northern Ontario's history has found its way home to the yard of the Timmins Museum. Watch Lydia Chubak's report.

TIMMINS — A piece of northern Ontario’s history has found its way home to the front yard of the Timmins Museum.

Decades ago the caboose once tailed an Ontario Northland Railway train.  Now it’s a conversation starter about how the railway developed the north.

"Where the museum is located and the caboose and some of the parking lot, that used to be the sheds for the old ONR station,” said Karen Bachmann, curator for the Timmins Museum.

“The roundhouse was located on this area and that's where they'd turn around the trains and just next door to where the Timmins bus station is now, that was the old train station.”

If the caboose’s walls could talk they would likely tell stories of the beautiful sights it’s passed along the way from the James Bay coast to Toronto’s Union Station.

If the caboose’s walls could talk they would likely tell stories of the beautiful sights it’s passed along the way from the James Bay coast to Toronto’s Union Station. Dec. 12/20 (Photo courtesy of Paul Woodward)

Bachmann said it’s from the late 1950s early 1960s.

"Because the rail lines were exceedingly important in the development of the north and the prosperity that northerners went through ... so the little caboose helps tell us that story,” said Bachmann.

Cabooses—once used as shelter for crew members needed for switching and keeping watch of the train’s cars ahead—became defunct when technology took over.

This one belonged to Paul Woodward of Timmins.  He said it’s been sitting in Powassan for about ten years.

"It was going to be 'Express Fries' and I wanted my children to learn how to, you know, money management and things like that to get them going and just with the pace of things around here it didn't get liftoff.”

He and the mayor thought it would be a great addition to the museum.

"The Bucket Shop provided a five-thousand dollar donation to the purchase of the unit and the Bucket Shop was also involved in the refurbishing of the unit on behalf of the city, so the sanding, the paint, the new window and glass,” said Woodward.

The Museum has plans to add some decals to the caboose and is still considering how it will be used.

But Bachmann says post-COVID, there will be a grand opening and people will be invited inside it to see some of its original features such as the ceiling, floor and sink.