The Kamloops Heritage Railway Museum will be closed until further notice due to zoning issues identified by the City.

General Manager, Ken Milloy, says the closure – which came just two days after their “successful” May 6 opening day – is another blow to the Kamloops Heritage Railway Museum just ahead of the busy summer season.

“Now that we can’t operate the [2141 steam locomotive] because we can’t get access to the track, we’ve morphed into more of a museum and theme park and that involves allowing the public in here far more often than was in the past,” Milloy said. “This was really built as a place for employees and volunteers to work, not a public access building, and what that’s done is raised the concern about the liability.”

“We just can’t have people coming in and wandering around on the site.”

Following a successful 2022 summer season – the first in the museum format – Milloy says the museum should be able to stay on track this year, but he notes the lack of revenue will make things “very precarious” for next year and beyond.

“I’m not a zoning specialist or a bylaw specialist in any way, I’m rather confused by it all at times, but we’re working with the City to sort out what can and can’t be done and what steps we could possibly take to reopen,” he said. “But it puts us in a real bind in terms of our plans for the year.”

Milloy tells RadioNL while the two sides work to find a solution, he’s hoping they’ll be allowed to take small groups of people on a guided tour of the site in a bid to try and bring in some revenue. He likened it to the Backshop Tour of the past, but one that would potentially take people around the entire facility.

“I’m certainly looking at putting it back on the table. There’d be no reason not to. We’re here and we’ve got the volunteers ready,” Milloy said.

“Some of the other things I’m looking at is pricing 53-foot trailers that we could use to build exhibits in and take out to the community and park them in a mall or at a school and leave it there for a week. Another thing I’ll be looking at over the next couple of weeks is renting retail space where we could put an exhibit in.”

Two sides to meet on Monday

The Heritage Railway Society and the City of Kamloops are set to meet on Monday. Milloy says “virtually every major department” of the city is involved all the way from Risk Management to Planning and Development, as well as Parks and Recreation.

“I suspect this meeting on Monday is mainly about the building itself, so it will be the planning department and the bylaws group so we can understand the coding and what needs to be looked at and explored,” Milloy said.

“And I suspect that there will be risk management people in there as well because that seems to be the major concern.”

A second meeting to deal with the property at 40 Mount Paul Way will take place in the future, though Milloy isn’t sure when as he notes it “takes forever” to schedule meetings at this time of year.

“It’s been almost a month now since we learned of the closure so [the delays have] slowed us right down,” he said. “And it will start impacting the grants that we can apply for going forward if I don’t have a place to support us.”

“It’s already costing us on the donation side. We know that it’s down considerably over where we’d expect it to be at this time of the year.”

In a statement to RadioNL, Barbara Berger, the City’s Recreation, Social Development, and Culture Manager, says she recognizes the “pretty difficult couple of years” the Heritage Railway Museum has endured because of COVID-19 and the loss of track time.

“The City supported them in 2022 to utilize their service agreement funds to explore this and create a new strategic vision for the future,” Berger said.

“The President and Executive Director recently presented to the Select Committee for Service Agreement Renewals and advised that one of their greatest challenges would be rezoning from T1 to the appropriate zoning for a Heritage Railway Museum/Education Operation.”

“As a result, a meeting with City administration from Facilities and Development and Engineering Services with the KHR President and Executive Director was established to review what would be involved and required in a re-zoning application,” Berger added.

“Until a rezoning has been accomplished, and the necessary changes made to the facility, the site is not zoned to bring large assemblies, tours and classrooms of children to this industrial site within a zoning that would take into account the safety and accessibility to host such events.”

KHR Optimistic About Reopening

While there is no opening date in sight, as Milloy suspects it will take at minimum three months but more likely a year to rectify all of the issues, he is still optimistic about the future. That is despite not knowing what it will cost to rectify the issues that would allow visitors to return to the museum.

“I don’t think it’s that bad,” Milloy said, when asked if the museum would be forced to close for good. “I would certainly I hope it isn’t [but] it’s an outcome that has potential though.”

“We have shut down all of our funding other than what we received from the city, which is a significant portion, and that was tied to the number of trains we ran each year so that has been changing our service agreement. But our ability to generate revenue on the other side of the trains was very solid this year, but we don’t know what impact this [closure] will have on city funding for us either.”

He pointed to other facilities like Britannia Mine Museum that is operating in an old mine site and not a purpose-built museum building, as an example of what he envisions this Kamloops museum could be.

“We believe this is a very clear winner when it comes to being a tourist attraction and a local resident attraction and with the development plans, we have we think it’s a phenomenal place and we don’t want it to get lost,” Milloy said.

“I came to Kamloops a year ago with a goal of helping them build what they wanted and I don’t intend on letting that drop. We’re going to just do what we can to make it work.”