By David F. Rooney
They’ve been working on a remarkable diorama and model train layout since 2002. It’s exacting work. Ed Jaatteenmaki, for one, has spent a year building a scale model replica of the CPR’s old Glacier Station. A year. And the method he used speaks volumes.
The log cabin structure wasn’t built with a lot of cheap dowels. No. Jaatteenmaki took cedar and basically extruded lengths of it through decreasingly small holes he drilled in a steel plate until he had the thickness he wanted. Then he carefully notched the ends, just as the logs on the original structure had been, assembled them, painted them, installed windows, built a roof and — voila! — he had a duplicate of Glacier Station. It’s really quite amazing, particularly when you compare it to a photo of the real building.
The club’s work doesn’t stop there. Fred Olsson has been working on a snow shed and there are bridges, a recreation of Alberta Canyon gorge that Greg Brule has been working on and much, much more.
And of course there are the trains. Lots of trains, but you can see all of this for yourself on Saturday when the club’s members — Brule, Jaatteenmaki, Olsson, Doug Mayer, Jordy Hunter, Rob Palumbo, Walter Cyronek and Dennis Holdener — hold an open house from 12 until 4 p.m. at the Railway Museum.
Who knows? If you like their work enough and are yourself a railroad enthusiast maybe you’ll even join their club. They’d like that.
