The Dinner Train

Who would have ever guessed Chadron, NE would have a Dinner Train! Well, here it is! We had never heard about this train until our good friends ask us to accompany them for a evening out to celebrate both His and my husbands birthday, both on the 12Th.

This is the car we were in, about 3/4Th way to the front. It was about a 3 hour ride, slowly going about 12 miles East and then back to Chadron. The two train cars hold about 64 people for the meal. It was 98 degrees out side but a very comfortable air conditioned inside.

You can see how nice it is with all the covered chairs, cloth table cloths and napkins, etc. Our table was where you see the waitress standing.

This is the 4 of us at the very beginning of the evening before the train started to move. You can tell at that point we were setting next to some old train cars with writing and graffiti on them. The scenery got much better as we started rolling.

Our friends are from that area and even own about 5000 acres of land. This picture is of some of their land that is rented out as ranch land.

Since our friend had been brought up and raised in that very area, we had our own tour guide.
This, He said used to be the very sight of a popular place called The Pink Panther. It was a big arena way back then where all the popular music groups and artists would come to perform. The arena building was sold and used as a pig farm before it finally burnt to the ground. This photo shows what is now there.

I did not think to take a picture of the first course of our 5 course meal. It was a appetizer tray of different olives and cheeses. This is our soup, corn chowder soup. It was very tasty. You can see I just had to try the Wheat Beer. Well, after all, I originated from a Wheat Farm in ND. This was very good beer, almost, but not as good as Michelob. It was made in Kansas City, Mo.

Here is our salad, served with a very nummy slice of sweet bread. The spinach salad with pear chunks and grape halves had a different tasty dressing, I think it might have been made from pear juice and vinegar? Maybe?

Here it is! PRIME RIB main course. We did have our choice of Prime Rib, Chicken cordon blue, or Cajun Shrimp. It all smelt delicious. Everything was cooked and prepared in the train kitchen.

This was the final course, desert, Cappuccino Mousse. It was very creamy and rich. I had to ask for coffee. I love coffee with my dessert.

This is what it looked like after almost everyone had gotten off the train.

Here is the train from the dark outside just before we got ready to leave for home. This train has been in operation for several years. This September 29Th will be it's last run. The tracks will be taken up. Farewell to a wonderful part of Chadron and History. Maybe if someone with a lot of money comes along and offers to buy it and the track section, just maybe it will stay in operation. It only ran from early may until late September every Friday and Saturday evening.

Here we are on our way home with a 45 minute lay over or traffic stop. We found out we had just missed a horrible storm with 4" rain, strong 65 MPH wind and large Hail. The water was running over the road that led back to our homes. The police had to close the road due to dangerous high running water. A few miles before we got to this point, we saw a big semi on its side in the ditch. This was all due to the bad storm. The area was so very dry and really needed moisture but when it is a down pour, the earth can only soak up the rain so fast, and it wasn't fast enough. All in all, we had a very enjoyable evening with good company, our friends.