Soo Line Historical Museum manager Lavine Stepp is seeing an increase in tours of the museum and requests for tourist information so far this year.

Between May 15 and June 20, 454 people toured the museum, compared to 356 last year. Museum staff fielded requests from 188 people for tourist information this year, compared to 136 requests at this time last year.

Stepp's data collection does not include a reason for the increase, but she's willing to speculate that a lot more people seem to be travelling across Canada this year and stopping in Saskatchewan along the route.

Most of the tourist information requests come from people in other provinces, to the west as well as the east, sometimes as far away as the Maritimes, she said Monday.

There are twice as many requests from out-of-province people as from Americans, she said.

American travellers are mostly on their way to some other part of Canada; they usually are not planning to spend their entire holiday in Saskatchewan, she said.

A lot of people have heard about the Wilson Silver Collection and will make a special trip to see it or to bring visitors to see it, she said. The museum staff collects tourist information for the City of Weyburn's tourism department.