Westland Industrial Heritage Park prepares for a big year in 2023
Between Christmas and New Year we did some fairly major modifications to the railway thanks to some great help from our friends from Halswell. That allowed us to see out last year and welcome in the New Year with a great day on New Year’s Eve. We think it was the busiest day we have ever had with lots of visitors enjoying a sausage sizzle, all our displays, tractor/trailer rides and day time and evening train rides.
Since then we have picked up our various projects where we left off before Christmas but have been pretty quiet on the visitor front. We are looking at ways to make sure people, visitors and locals, know where we are and what we do. So if you have visitors please let them know about us and encourage them to visit. Check us out on Facebook.
We have received some really good news recently. We have had confirmation that our application for a grant from the Government “Better Off” fund, has been successful. There are two projects. One is to build a new Maritime Centre that will house our collection of boats and allow us to expand and develop a marine-themed display. We also need a building to house some of our bigger vehicles like the big Mitsubishi Fire Engine. This will adjoin the Museum of fire which has, itself, had a recent facelift.
WIHP is looking forward to another busy and successful year. We hope the disruption of Covid continues to reduce. We have a big weekend planned for Easter with additional Railway opening, sausage sizzles and you can talk to our members and check out the progress on our other new and existing projects.
If you like what you see, come and join us.
Text – Westland Industrial Heritage Park.
Photo by Mauro Sbicego on Unsplash
