Although a little early for the 140th anniversary of the Last Spike at nearby Craigellachie, four friends around 8 p.m. Thursday drove the final plastic brick into their room-size Lego train exhibit on display this weekend at the Revelstoke Railway Museum.
Daryl Faulkner, Alex Broccolo, Caleb Short and Ryan Harris, along with his wife Kayleigh, spent Aug. 14 putting the final touches on their impressive Lego display that features CP and CN trains lapping a train cargo yard, canola oil field, rotating wind turbines, vibrant town and Glacier National Park.
As the modelling masterminds behind the Trans Canada Lego Train Club (TCLTC), launched in 2019, they've spent years conceptualizing and building on this intricate display, and previously showcased it in Vancouver in 2023 and Calgary last year.
"TCLTC is a group of Lego and train enthusiasts who enjoy creating realistic models and scenes with the iconic building blocks," Tourism Revelstoke, which financed half the exhibition costs through a $1,600 grant, shared online. "The displays are punctuated by fun tongue-in-cheek vignettes featuring Lego mini-figures in historical or pop culture moments."
This latest leg of the tour was rolling in the works by last February, when the museum's Victoria Hill stepped aboard as executive director. Having helped lay the plywood to fit the boardroom table's worth of bricks, Hill joked to Black Press Media on Friday, Aug. 15, that the original plan was to squeeze a much smaller Lego landscape up along the narrow aisles of the second floor.
"We didn't know what kind of space limitations we had," Faulkner reasoned. "Transportability has to be a factor when you build it as well."
"Daryl had the aha moment, which was to put it down here," Hill added, admiring the minute detail of every corner of the display. "The more you look, the more you notice."
Faulkner said a big aid for building custom and locally relevant Lego models is Google Street View, along with artificial intelligence rendering, which helped him recreate a real hotel from Canmore, Alta. Also featured in this spread are Field's railway station and one of Revelstoke's fast-food joints.
"I built an A&W because as a kid, we would always stop at the A&W in town," explained Faulkner, who's previously modelled numerous Calgary buildings. "A lot of the landscaping as well, we've based on the Revelstoke area."
And while none of the TCLTC members are locals, Broccolo's late grandfather, Richard, worked for decades in Revelstoke and Glacier as a locomotive engineer, until a few years before the Rogers Pass line was rerouted.
"He worked on CP pushers until the early 1990s, I think," said Broccolo, whose gamer nickname is Revelbrick.
Part of what got the club building this project years back was Broccolo being gifted a Lego flanger railroad car for Secret Santa, and modelling the same CP locomotive that he saw a picture of his grandfather riding many years back.
"Ever since I got (the flanger), I always wanted to bring it here (to Revelstoke)," he said, noting these models serve as a special tribute to Richard. "I've always wanted to model more mountain towns."
As a train powered by outside the museum on Friday, Harris mentioned that during TCLTC's setup Thursday some local CPKC crewmen stopped by to admire the handy work. (Jokes were exchanged about CP and CN being pasted on the same locomotive).
"We're having a great time so far," Harris said. "It was nice of the museum to invite us out."
Short, meanwhile, sat in the corner crouched over his computer, trying to program the battery-powered trains and cranes to coordinate container-loading. He codes the set via Control+ and Pybricks, with the goal of getting the locomotives to make stops into the loading station and signal to the crane so sea-cans can be added or removed.
"Honestly, it's fun," Short described of co-running the event. "You can show up, make what you want, make people happy, make some kids' days."
The exhibit will remain on display at the Revelstoke Railway Museum from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 16 and 17. General admission is $14 and TCLTC is also accepting donations.
After the weekend, the team will disassemble and migrate their exhibit to Calgary's Heritage Park to feature in the Railway Days show Sept. 13 and 14.
