A Moose Jaw man is on a mission to save one of the city’s oldest landmarks.  

The Canadian Pacific Railway clock is over 99 years old and one of the first electric clocks in North America when it was built. It sits on top of the old railway station at the bottom of Main Street North. It was brought to John Trodd's attention that the north face of the clock had stopped working.  

“It's (been) a couple of weeks now. It's just the one face. I disconnected it and the other three faces should be close to the right time,” Trodd said.  

The clock is gear-driven with a hollow shaft for the hour hand that rotates around the minute hand shaft. The gears then give the correct ratio for the hour hand to move properly. Trodd went up into the clock and found that the two shafts have seized together.  

He tried to use spray-on lubricant without success, so he reached out on Facebook to see if anyone had any ideas on how to fix the clock shy of getting a crane and removing the clock face. Disassembling the shafts is not an option as it may result in the clock hands falling onto Main Street.  

Trodd said he’s received a few ideas from the Facebook post that he will try once the weather warms up.   

The north face of the clock also seized up back in October, but Trodd was able to get it running again.  

Trodd’s interest in the CPR clock dates back to the early 2000s when the city approached him about restoring the clock for the city’s 100th anniversary. At that point, the clock hadn’t been running in 10 to 15 years and the roof was open so pigeons had moved in.  

He found people to clean and rebuild the mechanisms and the clock face and it was running by the time the anniversary came around. Since then, the clock has needed the odd repair.  

“I think every machine shop in town has fixed a piece of the clock at some point in their history,” Trodd said.  

This isn’t Trodd’s first go-around with helping fix historic clocks in the city. He’s also helped with fixing the clock tower at city hall. He doesn’t call himself a clock expert, but someone who can find the right people for the job to fix the mechanisms.