Aspen Crossing receives Last Spike

Justin Seward
Times Reporter

 

Aspen Crossing Railway Park received the Last Spike in a ceremony on Oct. 22.
The park just completed a 14-mile-long track that will extend through the whole site and ride through the scenic prairie landscape.
Owner Jason Thornhill could not be more thrilled for this day to come.
“We’ve been trying to bring this project to fruition for six years. It took a long time to deal with the CPR to actually purchase the 14 mile track and we needed a place for people to get on the train, so we built this spur line to go up to where the station and the parking area is,” said Thornhill.
“We were holding dinner theatre last week, called the ‘Last Spike’, and I said we should do ‘Last Spike’ here on the spur.”
The Aspen Crossing staff wanted to get the spike in the ground before the ground froze and as a group had to work very hard to get one.
“We had to work pretty hard because we wanted to do it before it froze and of course we had hydraulic spikers to make it a little easier to build the track in a faster time,” said Thornhill.
Thornhill believes it will be good for the southern part of the province to appreciate what kind of history has been preserved in the area.
“I think it’ll be good for all southern Albertans. It’s just a piece of history saved, so many thousands of miles have been ripped up in the last 10 years, it’s just nice getting to be a part of saving some history,” said Thornhill.
The new spur line will be in operation with the cars on the track on May long weekend 2015. It will operate every weekend and corporate events can be booked by calling Aspen Crossing at 403-534-2129.