Transportation Discovery Centre scheduled to be completed in 2011

A12

BY ALAN COCHRANE
TIMES & TRANSCRIPT STAFF

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The new Transportation Discovery Centre at the Moncton Museum will include hands-on exhibits designed to be educational, informative and fun for all ages, heritage officers for the City of Moncton said yesterday.

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RON WARD/TIMES & TRANSCRIPT

In a presentation to the Moncton West and Riverview Rotary Club, Brenda Orr and Danielle Boucher said the $7.6-million project will include a major expansion and renovation of the museum to include the new Transportation Discovery Centre. Orr said the project has been quietly in the works for about 10 years and they expect to launch a major fundraising campaign early in the new year. Construction is expected to begin next summer with a tentative completion date of sometime in 2011. The museum, located on Mountain Road, will be expanded in the front and back to accommodate the new discovery centre and its interactive exhibits. The expansion is being designed by Architects 2000 and the $7.6-million cost is expected to be shared by all three levels of government along with donations from corporate sponsors, service clubs and individuals. As the expansion will take up space on the front lawn, the old sandstone facade of the museum building -- which was taken from the old Moncton City Hall -- will be in an enclosed space to preserve it for the future.

The external design of the structure will be done in glass and shapes that resemble both the sails of a ship and the cow-catcher of a steam locomotive, representing how Moncton's history and heritage are deeply linked to transportation. Inside, the centre will have galleries, a gift shop and interactive displays designed to help people of all ages learn about Moncton's history and transportation in general.

Boucher said the mission of the museum has changed from being a guardian of artifacts and knowledge to a supplier of knowledge. She said the upgraded museum will use the history of a transportation as a way to look at how our own society has evolved. She said the interactive displays will help young people learn about the world around them and real issues like the environment and career choices. She said the museum is already doing this but is limited by space in the current facility.

New hands-on exhibits will include a station where people can sit in the driver's seat of a car and look through the windshield to see how the power of headlights has changed over the years. In another, they will learn about the international phonetic alphabet and decipher messages while listening to radio chatter between airplanes and the air traffic control centre. In another, they will be able to handle the controls of a steam locomotive and shovel coal into a simulated burner to learn about rail transportation through the ages. Other planned exhibits deal with Morse code, problem-solving and the chance to climb into a full-size cab of a transport truck.