MINNEAPOLIS — Many cities are planning train’s a-comin’ parties in December to gather food pantry donations and await the arrival of Canadian Pacific Railway’s lighted Holiday Train.
Decorated with thousands of Christmas lights, the 11-car train will carry five musicians, Santa and a few helpers as it makes its way for the second year from Chicago to tiny Portal, N.D., on the Canadian border.
At each of the 27 scheduled stops in the Midwest, selected food banks and food pantries will collect nonperishable food items and cash, which will remain in those communities to help people in need.
Meanwhile, another Holiday Train will be traveling across Canada from Montreal to Vancouver, raising food, money and awareness for hunger relief. Together, the two Holiday Trains will visit more than 75 communities in Canada and the United States. The Holiday Train program has helped raise 73 tons of food and nearly $900,000 (Cdn) for food banks since it began in 1999 in Canada.
Entertainers will be a new feature on the Midwest Holiday Train this year, with the addition of Randall Prescott, Tracey Brown, Patricia Conroy and Bob and Clint Moffatt. They will sing holiday songs from a General Electric-built stage car, a converted boxcar with concert-style speakers and lighting, or from the back platform of a vintage private railcar.
Both GE and IMC Global are sponsors of the U.S. Holiday Train.
The U.S. Holiday Train will start in Scranton, Penn., on Dec. 3 and make several stops in New York and Ontario before heading to Detroit. From there, the Holiday Train will travel to the Chicago area where it will begin the Midwest leg of the journey Dec. 8.
Canadian Pacific Railway is North America’s first transcontinental railway and is the only transcontinental carrier with direct service to the U.S. Eastern Seaboard. CPR’s 14,000-mile network serves the principal centers of Canada, from Montreal to Vancouver, as well as the U.S. Midwest and Northeast. CPR’s track feeds directly into the Chicago hub from the East and West coasts. Alliances with other carriers extend CPR’s market reach beyond its own network and into the major business centers of Mexico.