I had’nt heard of this concept prior to reading this article.What a great idea. It certainly counterbalances bad press aka the atypical press coverage of derailments mentioned elsewhere. I envy folks in Wisconsin. http://www.weau.com/home/headlines/4425031.html
CP has been doing this for a number of years now. Its cool to see.
The US train normally starts somewhere in the East on the Delaware & Hudson, crosses into Canada at Rouses Point, NY. Then it starts again in the Chicago area and follows the Soo Line main west across Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota.
I have seen pictures of the Canadian Pacific Railway’s Christmas special, all decked out in lights, and it’s a sight to behold. I think it is a shame that none of the other class one carriers in this country are doing the same thing.
CANADIANPACIFIC2816
“There was a time in this fair land when the railroad did not run, when the wild majestic mountains stood alone against the sun, long before the white man and long before the wheel, when the green, dark forest was too silent to be real.” Gordon Lightfoot
That’s not quite true, but no one does it as big as CP.
CSX has been carrying on the Clinchfield tradition of running a Christmas Train from Pikeville, KY to Kingsport, TN (orignally from Elkhorn City, KY to Kingsport). And KCS runs a small version. Trains Magazine has featured the CSX train in an issue, and usually covers each years train in a news article, and on the Newswire.
It might not qualify for the bigtime, but BNSF and Ellis&Eastern do run the Santa train every year from Parker to Sioux Falls, S.D.[:)]
For the third year running, I can’t see it because it comes through Calgary on one of my theatre’s show nights…
Just a note on “What They Used To Do” … A department store in Peoria, IL sponsered a “Santa Clause” parade The idea, of course, was to draw people into Peoria where they would shop for Christmas thingies at the department store. Nothing wrong or special with that.
But Santa arrived on the Rock Island. One laying over E unit from the “Peoria Rocket” pulled one laying over head end car carrying Santa. I saw it once. They came in “hot”. A “Honk Honk” on the horn and rapid deceleration into the Rock’s station.
That was more exciting to me than seeing Santa. This was in the 50’s and I had pretty much figured out the whole Santa Clause thing and knew what an E unit was at the time…
By then the Rock Island had two round trips per day between Peoria and Chicago. I reckon (hey, I was a child) that they used the equipment that came down from Chicago arriving in Peoria at noon. It returned at 3:00 PM, which gave 'em time to deliver Santa.
It was good that the Rock Island did this. It got their name in front of the public and made an association with good things like Christmas and Santa Clause. And the Rock did a land office business hauling people who weren’t satisfied with a Peoria department store up to Chicago and back to buy their Christmas thingies at Marshal Fields (which is now gone like the Rock Island.)