One of Airdrie’s prime entertainment options for families with young children has had to delay its regular opening date for a second year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Operated by the Alberta Model Engineering Society, Iron Horse Park typically opens on the May long weekend and runs until Thanksgiving. The miniature railway-themed amusement park’s opening has been tentatively rescheduled to June 13, pending the easing of public health restrictions announced earlier this month.
Last year, the park remained closed during its busiest part of the year, and was unable to open until early August. Ray Verdone, the park’s president, said he is grateful they were at least able to open for a few months, though many of the facilities in the park, such as the playground and picnic tables, remained closed.
“We weren’t doing too many birthday parties for quite a while but we still had a good season,” he said. “We had enough money to keep us afloat at the beginning of the season, but now we’ve really got to be careful.”
While the park offered up 160 rides during its reopening day last summer, expenses have been cut back to the bare minimum in order to keep the trains chugging this season, according to Verdone.
“We entered the pandemic with a decent amount of savings, even though that was earmarked to be spent. Obviously, everything stopped, so we’ve been just managing our options very carefully,” he added.
Though finances have been tight, throughout the offseason, Verdone said the park was still able to proceed with planned improvements to the park and railway track due to a stored inventory of supplies from previous years, including track, ties and gravel. He added workers and volunteers made sure to follow all Alberta Health mandates, so they would know how many people were in the park at any given time.
According to Verdone, a summer opening in 2021 would likely look very much like last year, with mandatory masking, two-metre markers indicating where people should stand in line, hand sanitizing before boarding the train, extended bars to separate the train cars and sanitizing the train after each ride.
“With any luck, we might even be able to open a little bit earlier, like a week before, but we just don’t know yet,” Verdone said. “We don’t have enough concrete information to go on now.
“We’re so looking forward to seeing everybody and all the smiling faces,” he added. “Behind the masks or in front of the masks – it doesn’t matter.”
Updates regarding the reopening of Iron Horse Park can be found online at ironhorsepark.net or by following the park’s Facebook page.
Carmen Cundy, AirdrieToday.com
Follow me on Twitter @carmenrcundy
