D.Rough came home and asked me if I’d be interested in riding on a pizza train with her niece and nephew. I immediately started chanting “PIZZA TRAIN” and stomping around the house making a train whistle sound. “I’ll take that as a yes”, she said.
No Top 5 list for this trip, but we had a blast. Thank you, Repeat and LunchLady for an awesome field trip!!
We drove about an hour up to Osceola, WI and found signs directing us to the depot. It’s got a bunch of train cars and locomotives and a small museum there at the depot. Kids were running around everywhere getting on trains and having the time of their lives (except those who were crying because their parents wouldn’t buy them something in the gift shop). I had no idea what to expect from this trip, since I intentionally didn’t do any internet snooping before this trip. We picked up our tickets for the pizza train and headed to the front of the line – pizza train customers are VIPs. Only one car was serving pizza – the rest of the riff raff had to sit in one of the other cars with no pizza (and a cheaper ticket price).
On our way onto the train, you grabbed a box with a personal pizza in it, a soda, and a brownie, and then pile in to find a booth to eat lunch. Everyone on our car wolfed down the pizza before we even got going. I told D.Rough we should wait until the train pushes off. Oh yeah - the train takes a short trip into Minnesota, detaches its locomotive from the front, drives around to the back of the train (which now becomes the front) and heads back to Osceola. Sure the pizza would take us 90 seconds to eat, but I wanted to be romantic and old-timey.
The nice Pizza Train lady told us a super quick history of the train (multiple cars from different eras) and then we took off. The kids all loved it. There was a snack car made from a box car. They had bars on the open doors, which let more people check out the passing scenery. There were a few different cars, and another dining car (used for brunch and dinner trains sometimes), and there was a mailcar. Sadly, no club car. All of them were pretty interesting, if you’re into trains (which apparently all male children are).
Here’s a photo of the locomotive driving away before it reattached itself on the other end of the train and headed back to Wisconsin.
All in all the whole thing took about an hour and a half, but you drive through some pretty beautiful wooded country and along the St. Croix River, eventually crossing it into Minnesota. It’s a nice little field trip for the family and I’m glad we all got to go. I’ve never heard of the pizza train, but now, all other forms of transportation will pale in comparison. And we found out there is a Pumpkin Train and Fish Fry Train – I know what someone is getting for their birthday this year….
