Engines are revving at the Simcoe County Museum this weekend.
The museum and the Historical Construction Equipment Association (HCEA) teamed up again this weekend to present Wheels and Tracks in Motion. The two-day event, which is also scheduled to run Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., features a variety of historical construction machines and equipment, from road graders and bulldozers to cement mixers, for visitors to explore.
“A lot of the pieces have been sitting for a long time, but they’re up and running and are here for people to enjoy and to see how the machines work,” said museum curator Kelley Swift Jones, adding she met a visitor who makes the five-hour drive from Quebec every year to attend the event. “The thing about this event is that it’s multi-generational. Parents will come with kids, a lot of fathers with grandfathers. Everybody wants to see how these machines operate.”
The Dunbrook family travelled from Toronto specifically for the event, said Bill Dunbrook, who told BarrieToday he loves coming to see the unique equipment at the museum and for his son, Henry, to get to see how they all work. His favourite vehicle, he admitted, was the red GMC dump truck, while nine-year-old Henry preferred seeing the grinder make large rocks into small rocks.
This was Henry’s third time attending the event and, like his dad, he was excited to explore the many pieces of historical equipment.
“It’s really cool to see how it works,” he said.
Carl Kitchen travelled nearly 200 kilometres from Lion’s Head and told BarrieToday he has a collection of antique tractors and engines, adding the yellow cement mixer on display at the event is a part of that collection.
“I was never a real computer bug, so I wanted something to do,” he said. “This is a place where I can display this … I play with this about half of the time I am here, and the other half of the time I am around visiting. We’ve been doing this for 30 years now and it’s something where I’ve made a lot of acquaintances and friends.”
The machines, added Swift Jones, help tell the story of building Canada.
“It’s a great opportunity to see the machines in action that helped to build modern Canada, the last century of our history. It’s the 70th anniversary of Highway 400 this year, so a lot of these machines — or machines very similar — would have helped build that leisure highway.”
