Spectators watch the Canadian Pacific Holiday Train roll west through Wisconsin on Sunday.
Canadian Pacific Holiday Train rolls across Wisconsin
Plates laden with six dozen Christmas cookies and thermoses of cocoa and hot apple cider were set out on a table near a row of vehicles next to folks sitting on folding chairs or standing, bundled for the 40-degree temperatures. Tailgate?
More like traingate.
It wasn’t Lambeau Field Sunday afternoon but a busy parking lot next to the train tracks in Wauwatosa that drew Elaine Sprenger and around 20 people in the Friendship Club. They snacked and sipped while waiting patiently for a train to arrive.
Not just any locomotive. Sprenger and thousands of others turned out to see the brightly colored, pulsing, rocking Canadian Pacific Holiday Train slowly chug to a stop behind Cafe Hollander and Saz’s.
“My friends heard about it and they said it was an awesome family event,” Sprenger said as she stood near the snack table. “Someone who walked by said, ‘Oh, you’re traingating.’ ”
A 10-car-long train glowing in multicolored lights, not surprisingly, attracts crowds almost everywhere it travels, said Mallory McCredie, CP media relations adviser.
“We had a crowd of 20,000 at Hamilton,” Ontario, Tuesday night at the start of the train’s journey in America, McCredie said in a phone interview from Calgary, Canada. “We find in the States there are some areas where we can’t stop because we’re not traveling on CP rails.”
The holiday train is traveling on CP rails in Wisconsin.
It’s the 19th year for the Canadian Pacific Holiday Train. The diesel locomotive, built in 1957, is 56 feet long and is one of two GP20C 2200 series engines rebuilt in 2013 to pull CP’s holiday train. A separate train travels in Canada during the holidays.
After leaving Wauwatosa at 5:15 p.m., the train visited Hartland, Oconomowoc, Watertown and Columbus on Sunday. On Monday, it was scheduled to continue through Wisconsin — Portage, 1:15 p.m.;
Wisconsin Dells, 2:45 p.m.; Mauston, 4:15 p.m.; Tomah, 5:30 p.m.; Sparta, 6:40 p.m. and La Crosse, 8:45 p.m.
New this year is a train tracker — cpholidaytrain.ca — for anyone who wants to know where the train is during its journey. The people traveling on the train are CP employees and their families.
Spectators are asked to bring food to donate in each community the CP
Holiday Train visits.
“We work with local food banks to come on site and take in donations which are responsible for distribution. So everything donated in that community stays in that community,” said McCredie.
Automobiles began pulling in a couple of hours before the train’s arrival in Wauwatosa, filling up parking spots on the street and lots near the tracks. Some people sat in the hatchbacks of vehicles, brought folding chairs or stood holding cups of warm drinks. Parents pushed strollers, carried children on shoulders or kept an eye on toddlers, some yelling “choo choo!”
Mary Costello of West Milwaukee came with her husband, daughter, sonin-law and grandson; it was her fourth year for the CP Holiday Train.
“It’s pretty. It’s different with all the lights,” said Costello, sitting in the cargo area of a minivan.
Nadia Sanchez stayed warm in the front seat of a 1933 restored Chevy truck as she waited to see the train for the first time. She said she would love to ride it someday even if it meant ending up in another city.
“I wouldn’t mind. I’d call my husband and tell him to come pick me up,” said Sanchez.
At 4:15 on the dot an unmistakeable whistle sounded and the glowing train slowly came into view. Lighted evergreen wreaths adorned the front and back of the train, cars were decorated in pulsating lights of reindeer, Santa’s sleigh, Christmas trees and gifts, candy canes and animated snowmen.
A woman turned to her child on the shoulders of his father and said “Oh look — there’s Santa! He’s waving out the door.”
Santa was indeed waving as the train pulled to a stop. Within minutes the large side doors of a boxcar dramatically lifted, white smoke billowing out and green and red lights glowing, as a pop band began playing “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.”
Within an hour, the train was gone, chugging toward the next city and the next crowd.
“My friends heard about it and they said it was an awesome family event.”
Elaine Sprenger Friendship Club member