Rosebud Museum celebrates re-installation of CNR semaphore tower
By Laureen F. Guenther Times Contributor
Laureen F. Guenther Photo
The CN semaphore tower was originally installed in 1967, the same year the Rosebud Lions Club opened the museum, said George Comstock, the sole remaining Lions Club member of that museum-founding committee.
The semaphore tower, he said, was donated by Eric Skibsted, who had found it when he was cleaning up unused rail lines and railbeds for CN Rail.
The first time, the installation process was simple, Comstock said.
“We simply dug a hole in the ground. We got an old wheelbarrow and some cement and mixed up some sand and gravel and made a base for the tower, right out in front of where the museum was. We lifted the tower up with a tractor and bolted it down and it was there.”
The tower had a ladder about three feet off the ground.
“There were several men in town there that are now sporting gray hair,” Comstock said. “They climbed the tower. Every young fellow that came along had to climb the tower.”
The tower stood for 40 years, reminding people of the railway’s importance in establishing their community.
The trains had hauled grain from grain elevators spaced every four miles along the railroad. People also used the train for personal transportation. There were four trains a day, two going west and two going east.
“We’d go (to Calgary) on the train at 6 o’clock in the morning … spend the day, catch the train back at 8 o’clock at night and be home by 10 o’clock,” Comstock said. “The railway was a big part of our community during all the years that it was here.”
Like the railway, though, the tower didn’t last forever.
“The base was cracked,” Comstock said. “The tower started to lean to the south. It was leaning to the point where the lady who had the gift shop just next to the museum said to me one day, ‘I think that tower’s going to fall over on my gift shop.’”
So, in 2005 or 2006, Comstock and a friend named Cal Wheeler dug up the tower and laid it down in the alley behind the museum. Comstock didn’t plan to leave it there long. He had Winston Sproule build new directional arms for the tower, since the original wooden arms were quite weathered.
In the meantime, two additions were built onto the museum, one in 2002 and another in 2010.
But the tower lay on the ground for several more years.
Then Historical Society board members Peter Lauridsen and Arthur Hudson took the tower apart and reassembled it. They also went through a more formal installation process, Comstock said, hiring an engineer to design a base and replacing a piece that was missing.
“(Now) I think it’s good to stand there for a few years,” he said.
There is one change though.
“They cut the ladder off and it’s about 10 feet above the ground,” Comstock said. “So hopefully unless someone’s very athletic now, they won’t be able to climb it.”
He’s proud the tower now stands tall and true, Comstock said in his speech at the ceremony. “It’s waiting for a train that will never come.”
The Rosebud and District Centennial Museum is on Main Street in Rosebud, across from the Rosebud Haskayne-Kenney Mercantile. It’s open to the public two hours before Rosebud Theatre’s shows begin, and by special request. Contact 403-820-2870 for more information or to request additional open hours.