We’re at the northern end of the line in Leduc, Alberta. We slept last night at the dock of our destination. Waking up this morning entailed the “alarm clock” of our neighbor at the dock starting his auxiliary power unit at 7 a.m. followed by violent shaking as the forklift drove into the trailer to pick up a load.
We’ll head south today to Crossfield, Alberta, to pick up a load of pallet-building materials. We’ll take the pallet-building materials down to Denver where they’ll make shipping pallets out of them. “Pallet-building” materials means 38,000 pounds of two by fours and one by threes of fine Canadian forest products, all bundled up on pallets and stacked neatly inside the 53-foot trailer.
Nanton is a town hanging on to its history and exploiting it. It has three wood grain elevators, the kind that are being replaced all across the Canadian plains by larger, more efficient concrete silos. Nanton raised the money and painted the elevators so they’ll stand out well against the sky. They charge for tours of the elevators.
“Downtown” Nanton has two north-south streets. Traffic goes north on one, south on the other. The business district fits on the one block that separates north from south. Every third shop boasts antiques. I didn’t actually count. It may be closer to one out of two.
On the north edge of town is the Little League field. Right next to that is the Lancaster museum. It houses one of the few WW II British bombers of that name still around. They take it out on the last weekend of May each year and start the engines. The museum was closed when we walked by, but we peeked through the windows of the hangar.
We were late because we had to visit the “Largest Garden Railway” in Canada. It cost $2 Canadian to see the layout. (let’s see, $2 Canadian times .901 exchange rate is $1.80 U.S. which explains why I have a couple of Canadian dimes in my pocket.) The layout is at the back of the Ultimate Train Shop. It is taken up every fall and relaid every spring, all 3,600 feet of track in the 7,000 square foot display area. All the buildings, of which there are dozens, are taken indoors, too.
The railway had just opened the previous weekend, so things were still a bit raw. Sixty mile per hours winds and rains had kept them off the project for awhile, too.