RR Evicted from Liberty Village

We saw on the news that the Model RR Club of Toronto was going to be moving from it's current location that they have been at for 67 years.

Sad.  This place is one of the diamonds in the rough.  There's so much history there.  This building was an artillery bunker that they used to make the big bullets for cannons.





Other than it used to be a place where they manufactured weapons of mass destruction.  It has become a place of imagination and creation.
It's so amazing and kids just love it.  We could spend hours there.  Well Kieran could spend hours there.  It's incredible the amount of work and detail and time these fellows have spent in this cave.  The tracks, the buildings, the trees, bridges, the programming of the switches and lights.  It is so Big Bang Theory.

But the Liberty Village has exploded.  Condos going up here there every where.  It's a jungle.  And so the owner of this property has decided to sell to a developer so that they can put up another condo.  Urban planning at work.  With urban development progress there comes a price.  Places like this usually don't have the financial backers that keep them around.  They rely on it's members and donations.  Sooner or later the owner of the building would have sold to developers.  The land that they are on has become more valuable. And the day has come.




I was informed they are moving to East York.  St Clair and O'Connor area.  It'll take them a few years to settle in.  Just another project for these guys.  But it'll be 1/3 the size of the current club home.  They'll need to do some urban planning themselves.

They always have a piece of paper so kids can do a scavenger hunt.  And they give the kids a treat when they find all the items.  I did the list on the left.  It took me hours to find them all.  And so I took a picture of all the locations for each item on the list, because in a few months, it's all coming down and preparing to move.  And it's just nice to remember.


This place even has underground railroads.  I was standing with another parent and we could hear the train but didn't see it.  And I commented that they built a subway system too.  I didn't realize it was true.  I didn't know about them because most adults are too tall.   Only 4ft people would have known about them.  And Asian adults usually have one eye on their smart phone email.  But the young ones will stumble upon them. There's little peep holes along the side of the structure.  Kieran pointed out his discovery to me.  And I took a photo of what's on the other side.

There was a TV crew there, not sure which station they were from, I was looking for a scavenger item and Kieran was wandering around, but they interviewed 3 kids and Kieran was one of them.  With his track record of auditions and history of clamming up in front of professional photographers.  I'm certain his responses were either inaudible or in his head.

We spent almost 3 hrs there, that's how long it took me to find all those scavenger items.  I know Tresa is saying that it was my competitiveness that kept us there that long.  Maybe...Nah.  I wanted to find all those items so I could have a complete photo archive.  I'm not competitive, I dislike incompleteness.

We said goodbye to Dave the president before we left.  He remembered us from Kieran's 2 birthdays that he had there.  And invited us to come visit again.

I'm sure we'll visit the Model RR club when it moves, but it will never again be like this.

Model RR club - vid 1
Model RR club - vid 2
Model RR club - vid 3
Model RR club - T-scale
Model Rail Road Club of Toronto photos (Dec 2012)