Locomotive pulls out of Lakawanna Park
PENTICTON -The Lakawanna Park locomotive has left the station for good.
The wooden replica of a train locomotive has been a familiar sight at the small Lakeshore Drive park for years. As part of the children’s playground, it was often used by children for climbing and playing on.
City of Penticton spokesperson Simone Blais said the city recently found the locomotive to have significant decay.
“It was also a target for vandals and the homeless. It’s unfortunate it could not be saved, but ensuring the safety of children was paramount,” Blais said, adding the city did try to find an alternate location for the train, but all indications were the train would not have survived the journey.
Blais said the city is looking at the idea of placing a mural on the washroom building in order to continue paying homage to the area’s locomotive theme.
To contact the reporter for this story, email Steve Arstad at sarstad@infonews.ca or call 250-488-3065. To contact the editor, email mjones@infonews.ca or call 250-718-2724.
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9 responses
What a shame. I know the artist. You should hire him to design something that will be child safe and can withstand vandals.
As it was not safe good to take away. I think as trains are so historic they should build another one. Plans can be drawn as project for ok college or ok university.if every one worked on it to make it lockable and safe it would be wonderful. retired carpenters can supervise students. lets do this for almost free. Come on Penticton.
the only rot here is the Penticton maintenance dept. and vandal’s , homeless?
Good ole’ city once again, taking away something special in a child’s eyes! Shame on you. You seem to find the resources to fix other not needed projects.If fact you should jump on one of many tug boats and take a long rideand while your at it give your heads a shake, and think about what’s is really important for the young and the old Of penticton
Preventive maintenance may have saved the structure but then the vandals would have torn it down.. . .
Please make another one
Put a Real One. install video surveillance and physically (IE: Extreme PAIN) punish the vandal. if you remove age, race, religion etc… as a excuse to be above the law and introduce real punishment (like extreme pain and real prison time, like 10 to 20 years jail time no parole). most crime will go down. Real physical pain is the *ONLY* language criminals (who should have no rights of any kind) understand. Canada has no spine and our prison a world renown as 5 stars world class resort. Prison = tiny cell 24/7 and bread and water nothing more anything else is pure luxury. And you don’t build a prison on criminal land (IE: Indian land) because they don’t own the land in the first place and you don’t let criminals run a prison.
Oh no we will be having a public meeting soon to build another hotel or some thing… just a start to get rid of the park.
Sad. One day we wont leave the house cuz its dangerous. Build a retirement home in its place!