The Selkirk No. 5931 steam locomotive, which proudly sits in front of Heritage Park next to 14th Street S.W., is undergoing a conservation project thanks to hundreds of generous donors who helped raise close to $67,000. Keith Curtis, Heritage Park director of fund development, says the Selkirk is a significant landmark in Calgary and remembers bringing his children to the park when they were young and always knew they’d arrived when they saw the locomotive. “Our donors are passionate train people,” he said. “They really brought this to the forefront, so when we decided to raise funds for it, it was because of them and because of their support that it was able to be completed.” Curtis says it wasn’t just one or two big donors but hundreds of people giving $10 to $1,000 each. “There are a lot of people who love the train and really wanted to see it restored,” he said. “So, it was just one of those things that everybody would fall in love with (that resulted in) our year-end direct mail, and Giving Tuesday was all about the train.” David Paul, Heritage Park senior curator, says the Selkirk was built in 1949, and the park acquired it in 1981 and parked it in its commanding position along 14th Street S.W. It underwent a major restoration in 1986, along with a few other paint touchups four more times, with the last being in 2001. “There are only two of these left in the world, so it’s an incredibly important piece of railway history,” Paul said. “It’s just a behemoth—such a cool, imposing thing to see—and I think it’s just great for the city.” Paul says the park has detailed archives of the paint colours for the engine, so it continues to look the same as when it was first commissioned. He says the park topped up the public donations to make sure the conservation project was done right. “We had to make sure we were going to do it correctly and that we were going to use materials that were going to be non-destructive as much as possible, because that’s part of working in conservation and preservation, as you want to be able to do things that are reversible but also something that’s going to last and withstand the elements and everything else that we have,” he said. Envirotech Abatement and Remediation and its team of six arrived at the beginning of September to assess the job ahead of them. “The whole shell was in a really rough shape,” said Eugene Toryanyk, Envirotech general manager. “There were rough spots—some of them almost two feet wide—and we basically were stabilizing the Selkirk because the lead paint was flaking off, and we had to scrape all the loose stuff off.” Toryanyk says the team first set up scaffolding and a tent over the locomotive to keep all the debris contained, and it doubled as a massive paint booth. The team couldn’t sandblast the metal to remove the paint because it would also have disintegrated much of the rusty steel making up the skin of the locomotive. “One of the gentlemen that works for us came over from Ukraine, and he used to paint cars, and he knew everything about auto body repair,” Toryanyk said. “Honestly, we did get lucky with him, and he knew what needs to be done and what materials to use and all that, so he did a bang-on job.” Toryanyk says the engine was finished with a clear spray acting as a protective shield to slow down the effects of sun, rain and wind on the paint. He’s hopeful the conservation project will last 50 years but says the rating of the paint product is only five to 10 years. “There was a campaign to do conservation work in the mid-2010s, but finances just didn’t allow for that to go through, and so it was left to the elements longer than it should have been,” Paul said.
