On Saturday , Aug. 3, 2013, Harbour Quay Farmer's Market-goers saw the Industrial Heritage Society at work at the Station Water Tower, putting the 1928 “Buda” locomotive back on the tracks at the Port Alberni Train Station.
The 'Buda” had spent the past year in the Industrial Heritage Centre, where it received extensive restoration work, including a new paint job.
The little gas locomotive was built by Westminster Iron Works for the R.B. McLean Lumber Company to move rail cars around the mill site and prepare shipments onto the main CPR line. It also moved logs from the woods to the Mill Only two such locomotives were built and this is the only surviving one.
It is now on display for the month of August on the spur beside the Station, along with a "crummy” - a wooden boxcar once used to transport loggers to their work in the forests. The crummy belonged to “Victoria Lumber & Manufacturing” - a predecessor company to “Macmillan-Bloedel” - which had logging camps and a big sawmill on the east side of Vancouver Island.
— Submitted by David Hooper, IHS volunteer