Rachel Bergen

Volunteers worked hard on Saturday&nbsp;to prepare what might be&nbsp;Manitoba's last remaining wooden streetcar for an unknown future.

Built in 1909 and retired in 1955, Streetcar 356 currently sits at the Winnipeg Railway Museum. There, a small team of people have been stripping it down to fix and restore it for over a decade.

But the museum is set to close, and the car must be moved out by the end of the year.

"We're putting back new pieces onto the streetcar and things were looking up, we had donations from everyone who wanted to see the streetcar restored to its former glory," said&nbsp;restoration director Robert Loiselle.

"Unfortunately now, after Dec. 31&nbsp;we don't know if we're even going to be able to be allowed to keep working on it."

Volunteers have been working on restoring streetcar 365 for more than a decade. They put wheels on it on Saturday to move it once the Winnipeg Railway Museum closes its doors at the end of the month.

Streetcar 356

The museum has called the upper platform&nbsp;along historic Track&nbsp;1 and Track 2&nbsp;of the downtown Via Rail-operated station home for the last 30 years, but the 110-year-old building needs significant upgrades to be up to code.

The City of Winnipeg's&nbsp;long-term plans include converting part of Union Station, including Track 1 and Track 2,&nbsp;

Railway Museum faces forced departure from Winnipeg's Union Station

A wealth of railroading relics are in jeopardy after a Winnipeg museum has been told to pull up tracks from its home in Union Station, where it has been set up for the past 30 years.

The Winnipeg Railway Museum houses several locomotives, a wooden boxcar, caboose, a sleeper car that served the second wave of immigrants to the west, a refrigerator car, a number of vehicles and many more artifacts.

Railway Museum

The museum houses several locomotives, a wooden boxcar, caboose, a sleeper car that served the second wave of immigrants to the west, a refrigerator car, a number of vehicles and many more artifacts.

Back on track: Winnipeg volunteers are restoring one of the city's original streetcars, 60 years after it ran

It doesn't look like it yet, but Streetcar 356 is on its way back to its former glory.

Streetcar 356 sits on a track in May 1953, two years before becoming obsolete.

The volunteers are hoping to be able to raise enough money to build a space large enough to accommodate the wealth of railroading relics, including Streetcar 356.

Greg Agnew, the president of Heritage Winnipeg,&nbsp;is on the team working to restore the car.

"It's a major part of our history and it has to be taken care of," he said.

Loiselle hopes the&nbsp;relic of the past could inspire the future.

"The importance of the streetcar is to basically renovate it to remind everybody that Manitoba is an electric province, we used to have electric streetcars and maybe the way of the future is to go back to electric."

Restoration director Robert Loiselle says Streetcar 356 may be a relic, but hopes it will inspire a greener future.

Streetcar 356 being prepared for unknown destination as Winnipeg Railway Museum closes

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