From restaurants to safety consulting, the Drumheller Dino Den heard the applicants and made its decision.
    In the end, Dinosaur Valley Express won the Dino Den grand prize.
    Dinosaur Valley Express is a unique bus service to be introduced this year by Shelley Rymal and Karel Stojan of Sage Valley Marketing. This will be a hop-on, hop-off guided bus service that will run during the summer season to major attractions throughout the valley. They will be using a unique cable car bus.
    This was just one of a variety of ideas presented to the Dino Den adjudicators. In all, there were seven applications made and five made presentations last Wednesday night.
    “I like that all of these are starting with or without our help,” said adjudicator Stacey Stewart.
    The grand prize includes $1,000 from the town of Drumheller as well as a business license for a year, $1,000 each also from Community Futures and the Drumheller and District Chamber of Commerce, There is also an enhanced banking package from Chinook Credit Union and an advertising package from Drum FM.
    Vicki Myers, who presented to expand the Melting Pot Art studio, felt it was a valuable exercise.
    “It was a cool idea, really out of the box,” she said.

    Work is being done on the Atlas Coal Mine’s tipple to make sure it remains in place for generations to enjoy.
    This spring, crews began work on phase 1 of an approximately $600,000 project to shore up the icon of the valley.
    “The first phase involves a lot of stabilization work,” said Robin Digby of the Atlas Coal Mine. “They are putting support members in, so when the guys come to do the replacement, the building is secure.”
    He explains they are also replacing some whalers, horizontal timbers that tie the building together. This includes some of the whalers that are attached to the guy-wires.
    “With those whalers that are old and rotten, they compromise the guy-line’s ability to do their work,” explains Digby.
    He says they are also putting in new guy-line anchors.
    The work is being done by Macdonald and Lawrence, which specializes in timber framed structures. This same company completed an assessment of the structure last season. The company did some work on the conveyor a couple years ago. Digby has great confidence in the company and in fact, Macdonald and Lawrence  also looked at the Hanna Roundhouse last week.
    The first phase should be competed this season and while construction is underway, staff has been able to continue to utilize the tipple for tours.