Heritage Park Historical Village

Heritage Park occupies 127 acres (51 hectares) on the south shore of the Glenmore Reservoir in southwest Calgary, roughly 15 minutes by car from the downtown core. It opened on July 1, 1964 and now presents more than 100 exhibits covering western Canadian life from the 1860s to the 1950s, arranged as a pre-railway settlement with a Hudson's Bay Company fort replica, a First Nations encampment, a railway-era prairie town, an antique midway and the year-round Gasoline Alley Museum.

The railway is not an add-on here — it is the axis the village was built around. Heritage Park unveiled its railway in 1964, the same year the park opened. The main loop runs 4,300 feet (about 1,310 metres) of standard-gauge track laid on 100-pound rail, and the working steam train is included with every admission rather than sold as a separate ticket. Three station buildings sit on the circuit, all of them genuine Canadian Pacific structures moved to the site: Laggan Station, built around 1890 at Laggan (today's Lake Louise) on the CPR main line and donated by the railway in 1976; Shepard Station, built in 1910 at Shepard on the CPR line that split northeast toward Strathmore and southeast toward Gleichen and Medicine Hat; and Bowell Station, a pre-fabricated building the CPR unloaded near the hamlet of Bowell northwest of Medicine Hat in 1909, given to the park in 1964 and converted into a washroom.

The rolling-stock collection runs to roughly 30 pieces — locomotives, tenders, coaches, flatcars, boxcars and cattle cars — with equipment dating from 1882 to 1949 and provenance from Canadian Pacific, Canadian National, the Morrissey Fernie & Michel, Pacific Coast Terminals and the Northern Alberta Railways. A roundhouse was built on site in 1981, served by a turntable the CPR donated the same year. The park records the turntable as built in either 1907 or 1922 by the Canadian Foundry Company in Winnipeg, and traces it through North Bend, Arrowhead and finally Sicamous, British Columbia before its move to Calgary. It now sits behind the roundhouse, turned by an air-operated motor, giving rolling stock access to the repair shops and display tracks.

The Heritage Rail Yard on 14th Street is the best photographic position on the property and requires no admission: Selkirk #5931, Alco S2 #7019 and caboose 437358 stand in the open, best lit in late afternoon when the sun comes around to the west side of the locomotives.

Inside the park, the turntable behind the roundhouse is the signature shot — an air-operated 1907-or-1922 Canadian Foundry table with a working steam locomotive on the deck. It is demonstrated publicly during Railway Days, which is the only reliable window for photographing the turn itself. Trackside, the curve approaching Laggan Station gives a clean three-quarter view of the train with the station's mountain-resort woodwork behind it, and Shepard Station in Village Square works well for period platform scenes with costumed interpreters.

Steam-and-smoke shots are easiest on cool mornings in mid-May and late September, when the exhaust plumes hold. The village is set between 1860 and 1920, so wide shots are largely free of modern intrusions except at the Heritage Plaza end. Personal photography is permitted throughout; commercial and wedding photography is arranged separately through the park, so contact guest services before bringing professional kit.

The two locomotives that pull the train share an unlikely wartime biography. C.P.R. #2023 and #2024 are both 0-6-0s ordered for United States Army service in the Far East: #2023 was built in 1942 by the American Locomotive Company at Schenectady, New York, and #2024 in 1944 at the Lima Locomotive Works in Lima, Ohio. Neither reached the theatre they were built for. Sold as war surplus to Pacific Coast Terminals in 1947, they spent 18 years as yard engines on the wharves at New Westminster, British Columbia. In 1965 a private citizen bought both engines as Pacific Coast Terminals was scrapping them, then resold them separately to Heritage Park — which is why two sister locomotives from different builders now work the same 4,300-foot loop.

Outside the gate, in the Heritage Rail Yard on 14th Street, stands the piece most Selkirk hunters come for: C.P.R. #5931, a Selkirk Class T1c built in 1949 by the Montreal Locomotive Works and designed specifically for the Calgary–Revelstoke run over Rogers Pass. Thirty-six Selkirks were built between 1929 and 1949; the park describes them as the largest, heaviest and very nearly the most powerful steam locomotives in the British Commonwealth, and #5931 is one of only two that survive. It was saved by Calgary's 5900 Club and displayed at Mewata Park from 1959 to 1981 — for years under the wrong number, misidentified as #5934 — before redevelopment of the city's western core sent it south to Heritage Park. Beside it sits C.P.R. #7019, an Alco S2 diesel-electric switcher, and CPR caboose 437358. This yard is visible from the parking promenade, which makes it a rare case of a museum's headline locomotive being photographable before you buy a ticket.

The collection is still growing. On July 24, 2025 Heritage Park announced the acquisition of a 1951 diesel-electric locomotive from the Alberta Railway Museum in Edmonton — the first locomotive added to the collection in nearly 50 years — supported by $329,000 from Travel Alberta and Prairies Economic Development Canada's Tourism Growth Program. The engine arrived on July 25, 2025 and entered service that fall. It now hauls the Springtime Express, a 105-minute run every Sunday in March with a staged stop at the Wainwright Hotel and a two-seat Premium Cab Experience alongside the engineer — one of the few chances in western Canada to ride in the cab of a 1950s diesel on a booked ticket.

The steam train is a hop-on, hop-off circuit rather than a single ride, and most visitors use it as transport between quarters of the village. Departures leave Midnapore station between 10:20 a.m. and 4:45 p.m. at roughly 25 to 35 minute intervals, calling at Shepard and Laggan; after 3:57 p.m. the train stops at Laggan on request only. Because a single admission covers unlimited trips, riding the full loop early — before the mid-morning crowd builds — and then walking back through the village is the standard railfan tactic.

Beyond the railway the park runs a 1964 re-creation of a lake paddle steamer, the S.S. Moyie, on eleven cruises of about 25 minutes across the Glenmore Reservoir between 10:35 a.m. and 4:25 p.m., plus an electric streetcar, horse-drawn and tractor-drawn wagons, and an antique midway with working period rides. All of it is included in admission. Costumed interpreters staff the shops, the fort, the farm and the stations, and a telegraph operator works the station keys during special programming.

The Gasoline Alley Museum, at the front of the site, stays open year-round when the Historical Village is closed. It is a three-storey building holding one of the world's largest public collections of antique vehicles and oil-and-gas artifacts from the early 1900s to the 1950s, including Canada's largest collection of restored gas pumps and one of the largest collections of restored trucks. Expect a full day if you are travelling with children; three to four hours is realistic for an adult visit focused on the railway and Gasoline Alley. Crowds peak in July and August and around Railway Days, which falls on September 19–20 in 2026 and adds turntable demonstrations, a Fairmont speeder display, water-tower demonstrations, hand-car rides and a double-headed steam train with both locomotives on the point.