Lumel Studios creates a glass memorial trolley
I wrote this post and had it basically ready to post on January 5, 2021, but just didn’t know what to do with it. But today is the third anniversary of the day the glass trolley was delivered, and looking at the draft version of the post anew, I see places where comments are useful.
On June 4, 2020, Lumel Studios, a glass blowing facility in Whitehorse, Yukon, created a whimsical sculpture of the Whitehorse “waterfront trolley” that my friend Jim O’Neal worked on. A bit of Jim’s cremation ashes, and those of his dog, Charlie, create the white frosting seen in the windows of the trolley as the process unfolds in this post.
For MJ, the idea for this sculpture began with a memorial sculpture I had Lumel create for my dog Monty in 2017 – see my post about “glass Monty“.
In the summer of 2000, what became known as the Waterfront Trolley began running up and down the WP&YR rails on the Whitehorse waterfront. The first photo was shot that June. Trolley 531 had been bought by the Government of Yukon in the fall of 1999 for $85,000, from the Lake Superior Railroad Museum in Duluth, Minnesota. They had acquired it in 1978 from the city of Lisbon, Portugal, where she had worked in the city’s transit system since being built in 1925 by the Santa Amaro Works of Lisbon Electric Tramways, Ltd.
The process began at 1:10.
The photos and drawings the team was working from. The intent was not to create a scale model of the trolley, but rather a whimsical interpretation of it, which Jim would have enjoyed.
Creating the thin string of glass that will be used for window frames.
Adding the cremation ashes.
At 1:48 the basic shape had taken form. The colour of the glass changes dramatically as it cools.
Adding the first of the window frames.
The mass of the piece required frequent heating of the entire piece, sometimes with a blowtorch and sometimes by putting the whole piece back in the oven.
MJ watching the artisans at 2:10.
Some of what was going on may be better seen in a video, so I’ve posted a 53-second video at Youtube.
Adding more of the window frames.
At 3:12 the wheels were being added. Getting the sculpture to sit properly required some grinding of the wheels after the piece was finished.
Adding the other two wheels, at 3:17.
At 3:20, two hours and 10 minutes after beginning, the sculpture was snipped off the rod, and moved to the cooling oven.
June 5, 2020: MJ picked up her glass trolley this afternoon, and we took it over to get some photos in a proper environment, in front of the historic WP&YR roundhouse (which is actually rectangular 
).
A final comment on June 5, 2023 – the sculpture now sits on the coffee table in MJ’s home, where I get to see it often. It has turned out to be as perfect a memorial as anyone could have hoped for.
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That was quite interesting.. real fitting concept too for your late friend! That rolling kiln is truly a piece of rolling working art too. I did remember that prior post about your own tribute to the late great fur kid Monty.