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High Level Bridge lighting to mark milestone |
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Written by Delon Shurtz LETHBRIDGE HERALD
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Thursday, September 03 2009, 9:31 PM |
Del Allen hopes he isn’t upstaged by the moon Saturday.
The Lethbridge businessman is scheduled to light up the train bridge beginning 9 p.m., and the darker the sky, the brighter the bridge.
Allen, who has for months worked tirelessly with Canadian Pacific and others to prepare the historical structure for the “In the Shadow of the Bridge” festival, tested the lights about 12:30 a.m. Thursday. He was pleased with the result, even though the bright moon was a little distracting.
The moon is expected to be almost full Saturday night, but Allen is confident the bridge lighting will receive the majority of the oohs and aahs from the thousands of residents expected to watch the bridge light up for the first time in its 100-year history.
“You can see it from the highway, from the westside . . . everywhere you can see the bridge from,” Allen says.
More than 130 lights will illuminate the bridge from one end to the other. And not only on Saturday. Allen hopes the bridge can be lit on numerous occasions throughout the year, such as Remembrance Day, Christmas, and Canada Day, as well as others. In fact, he’d like to see different coloured lights used during Christmas. And while the lights are currently powered by generators, Allen eventually wants to hook into the city’s electrical system.
Fortunately there weren’t any glitches in Thursday’s test run, which left Allen feeling confident about Saturday’s celebration, and he’s looking forward to firing up the generators and lighting the bridge. And even though lighting the bridge is not a new idea, this will be the first time anyone has done anything about it.
“Nobody’s ever, ever done it. Now the citizens of Lethbridge are going to see it.”
Allen has spent months and countless hours planning the event. He had to get Canadian Pacific’s approval — a long and complicated process itself — and he’s spent his own money; about $130,000 for the light fixtures alone. He hopes to recoup his expenses — he’s volunteered his own time and that of his company — through a fund-raising campaign, which may see donors names put on a cairn near the east end of the train bridge.
While most of the planning and preparations for the event are all but done, the work is far from over, and there will be ongoing expenses. Every time the bridge is lit up, security guards must be posted at each end of the structure, and once the lights are turned off, they have to be dismantled and stored until the next event, then set up all over again.
But it will be worth it. Allen believes people will come from far and wide to see longest train bridge of its kind in the world lit up.
Motorists, however, need to be careful where they stop to see the illuminated bridge, especially this weekend. Lethbridge regional police will be ticketing anyone who parks on the highway or any other place where they can’t legally or safely stop.
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