Does anyone know what's happening with ex-CNR 2747? The latest headline I see in the flimsies is it's now going to court but the story is unavailable. Is it an ownership dispute?

Thanks.

Jason

Fight brews over steam engine
Businessman takes on rail museum

A tug-of-war has erupted over a landmark Transcona steam engine that may have to be settled in court.

Business owner Bill Briercliffe is trying to tighten the east-end community's hold on a 1926 locomotive and fuel car, which have stood as a monument for decades at a Plessis Road park.

He wants to raise money for a protective roof over the engine -- one of the first constructed at Transcona's Canadian National shops -- at the same time a separate group gears up to move it to indoor space downtown.

"It was built here in Transcona. This is its history, and this is where it belongs," said Briercliffe, 77, the owner of Transcona Funeral Chapel.

The engine has been the target of vandals who break into its fenced compound and spray-paint and hold drinking parties there.

COAT OF PAINT

Briercliffe recently arranged a fresh coat of paint for the engine to cover graffiti. And it is the same vandalism that has the Winnipeg Railway Museum planning to haul the train to its enclosed space at Union Station on Main Street.

Museum president Ben Van de Mosselaer said the efforts of Briercliffe -- a former official with a now-defunct Kiwanis Club chapter that owned the train -- come after the engine was put in his group's hands more than 20 years ago.

"I think it's a joke," Van de Mosselaer said yesterday. "He's misleading people. It's not right for him to fund-raise to put a roof on it when he knows we're trying to move it."

CN moved the train to the park in co-operation with the Kiwanis Club in the 1960s.

Van de Mosselaer said the "very stubborn" Briercliffe had someone "just slap paint on" the engine without doing proper preparation.

"This was never discussed with the museum," he said. "I don't know what right he thinks he has to do all this."

The museum wants to disassemble the train and ship it to Union Station for reassembly. It estimates the cost of cleanup and repair, even at its present site, at at least a few thousand dollars.

He concedes the dispute could "quite conceivably" require a court ruling if he gets community support for his position that the engine has been neglected.

Coun. Russ Wyatt (Transcona) is trying to keep anger from boiling over.

"I'm wondering if there's a solution to keep it in the community, but get it out of the elements," Wyatt said. "That way we're all achieving the same goal."