MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — Minnesota’s John “the voice of new folk” Gorka and Wisconsin folk-rocker Willy Porter will be the Midwestern headliners aboard the Holiday Train rolling musical shows for hunger relief Dec. 9-16 from Chicago to Minot, N.D.
This unusual musical venue is really a 13-car Canadian Pacific Railway freight train decorated with hundreds of thousands of Christmas lights. A lighted tree atop the cab of the big red locomotive and lighted wreaths on the front and back of the train make it look like a child’s Christmas morning wish come to life — to see a toy train circling a decorated tree.
John and Willy, with Celtic-pop recording artists the Ennis Sisters and Canadian Country Music Association Hall of Famer Tracey Brown, will be rockin’ in the subzero performing live holiday music shows outdoors at night from a boxcar that converts into a stage. The shows are free, but crowds are encouraged to bring cash and food donations to be collected by local food shelves and food banks. Canadian Pacific Railway also makes check donations to food banks. All donations remain locally. The train, which pulls empty boxcars and vintage private rail cars holding the musicians and Santa (OK, he’s one of our employees enjoying a break from his day job) is a very visual prop for hunger relief.
In what has become a holiday tradition, thousands of people bundle up and eagerly greet the train as it arrives at depots, in rail yards, next to grain elevators, over railroad grade crossings and on a reservation. They ooh and ah as the lighted train arrives in big-city neighborhoods, suburbs and lots of small farming communities along the former Milwaukee Road from Chicago to St. Paul, Minn., and the Soo Line Railroad west of Minneapolis.
The U.S. Holiday Train will begin Nov. 30 in Scranton, Pa., travel northward through New York over CPR’s Delaware & Hudson subsidiary and head into southern Ontario before beginning its Midwest journey Dec. 9 in Gurnee, Ill. The train will make 30 Midwestern stops before it terminates Dec. 17 following the last show in Weyburn, Saskatchewan.
Another Holiday Train will be crossing Canada from Montreal to Vancouver at the same time with a different cast of musicians.
The shows are short — 20 to 30 minutes long. After all, temperatures can dip below zero at night in December in the Upper Midwest! But hearing thousands of people standing in the cold singing “Silent Night” a cappella with the musicians at the end of the shows is always heart-warming.
Canadian Pacific Railway’s U.S. headquarters are in Minneapolis and its U.S. locomotive maintenance base is in St. Paul. There are about 3,000 U.S. employees, including nearly 1,200 in Minnesota.
Why do we do this? Grain is one of the single biggest commodities that Canadian Pacific Railway ships. So it’s fitting that the shows raise food, money and awareness for hunger relief. Canadian Pacific Railway has helped food shelves and food banks raise nearly $2 million and about 400 tons of food since the program began in 1999.
Chambers of Commerce, convention & visitors bureaus and other civic groups and service clubs help promote and organize the stops in their communities and assist in fund-raising. Last year, Cottage Grove, Minn., took home the bragging rights for the biggest crowd (estimated at 6,000 despite bitterly cold winds) and most money raised ($16,000 for the Friends in Need Food Shelf). Mary Slusser of the Cottage Grove Area Chamber of Commerce, the wife of CPR locomotive engineer George Slusser, spearheaded a committee that organized the stop for Cottage Grove, St. Paul Park and Newport last year and is looking to top that record again. Several other communities hold “train’s a-comin’ parties,” organizing chili feeds (Hankinson, N.D.) and spaghetti suppers (Thief River Falls, Minn.) and serving refreshments and offering local entertainment (Christmas karaoke for kids in Gurnee, Ill.), before the big train arrives.
CPR’s “Kiddie Trains” driven by employee Dan Wolf of Milwaukee and retiree Robert Dorcy of Maple Grove, Minn., offer parking lot rides at several stops. Other employees pitch in by distributing toy train whistles and candy.
The train schedule, including dates and locations, is available at: http://www.cpr.ca .