Font Resize
Kids love trains. And so does Grandpa. The intergenerational appeal is what led us to board the Osceola & St. Croix Valley Railway on a recent Saturday.
As the vintage train rolled along the St. Croix River, my two young sons stuck their heads out the window and let the wind whip their blond hair. Their grandparents from California listened to a volunteer explain the history of the railway. And I just enjoyed the rumble and sway of the train, happy to have no one clamoring for attention and wondering what it would have been like to commute in this train car decades ago.
Since 1992, volunteers with the Osceola & St. Croix Valley Railway have been running restored vintage trains out of the old depot in Osceola, Wis., to the towns of Marine on St. Croix and Dresser. It's a leisurely and nostalgic trip in summer and a stunning way to see the trees change color in fall.
The 20-mile round trip to Marine on St. Croix takes about an hour and a half. You descend along the sandstone bluff above the river and cross into Minnesota on an old drawbridge. The train climbs through the woods in William O'Brien State Park to the outskirts of Marine on St. Croix, where it turns around and heads back to Osceola.
There are no houses along the route and few people, just the placid, brown river with its sandbars and the occasional people in canoes or kayaks who stop paddling and look up when the train rumbles past.
"Look, they waved," shouted my 5-year-old son who had just
Nearly all the boaters we saw waved. Maybe that's because a train on the track is not as common a sight as it once was. The tracks were built in 1887 by a group of flour mill owners in Minneapolis who wanted to avoid sending shipments through Chicago and paying tariffs to James J. Hill. Originally named the Minneapolis, Sault Ste. Marie and Atlantic Railway, the railway name was shortened to the Soo Line.
Once, you could take a sleeper car through here on the way to Montreal. But passenger service stopped in the 1960s. Today, the Canadian National Railway owns the tracks, and several freight trains run on it every week, hauling gray basalt trap rock from a quarry near Dresser.
WATCH THE BRAKEMAN
But a history lesson and a great view can entertain restless kids for only so long. Pretty soon, ours were clamoring to explore. We walked back through the train to the last car, where we bought some bottled water and a Coke.
Then, the train started slowing down as it rolled into Marine on St. Croix. As it came to a stop, my boys and a few other kids pressed up against the chain slung over the back door while conductor Mark Braun of Hutchinson, wearing big leather gloves, grasped the lever of the hand brake and cranked it down.
Like the engineer, the brakeman and other crew members are volunteers with the Minnesota Transportation Museum, the nonprofit organization that runs the railway. (They can always use more volunteers, by the way).
Braun explained the brake was just like a hand brake on a car, and it kept the train from rolling downhill. Then, he pulled a two-way radio from his hip.
"The hand brake on the 1102 is set," he messaged. "You can commence the run around."
The "run around" is when the engine uncouples from the front of the train and "runs around" the cars to the front of the train on a short section of track called the "siding." We heard a deep whistle and a rhythmic clanking. The kids rushed to a side window and peered back down the track.
"Here comes the engine!" someone shouted. The engine rumbled past and switched onto the main track and then started backing up.
"Here he comes, he's getting closer and closer," said a dad. His daughter, perched on his shoulders, squealed, "Here comes the choo choo train."
We coupled with a jolt.
Luke Reed, 3, in a red Thomas the Tank Engine T-shirt, stood mesmerized. It was his first train ride.
"He's a huge Thomas fan," said his dad, John Reed, who had just moved the family from Mississippi to Farmington. "When we had this opportunity to ride the rails, we had to come out."
POST SOME MAIL
The last car, which had now become the first car in the train, had been restored to how it looked in 1947, when it operated as a rolling post office in North Dakota. Canvas mail pouches slumped on the floor and wood slots and bins covered the walls where postal clerks would sort the mail destined for various small Midwestern towns.
We were lucky to have retired mail clerk Pete Feist of St. Paul on volunteer duty that day. He had worked on some of the last trains to carry mail in the 1960s and told us how the train would whistle three times before pulling into a station, his signal to prepare to swing the long metal catcher arm out an open window and catch a bag of mail hanging ready at the station platform. The train wouldn't even slow down, giving rise to the term "on-the-fly" mail pickup.
At the peak of service during World War II, 114 trains brought mail in and out of the Twin Cities daily. Today, the Osceola & St. Croix Valley Railway claims to be one of only two places in the country where mail is still caught on the fly.
You can buy a postcard in the concession area, write a message to someone and have it stamped. The cards are placed in a mail pouch and hung on the Osceola platform where they are caught on the fly by the train on the return from Dresser.
We made our way back into our seats in time to watch a bit more of the river roll by. Then, as the train pulled into Osceola, we heard something we never hear on car rides.
"We're back already?" asked our 5-year-old. "That wasn't long enough."
Maja Beckstrom can be reached at mbeckstrom@pioneer press.com or 651-228-5295.
FAMILY OUTINGS: THE SCOOP
What: The Osceola & St. Croix Valley Railway
Information: 715-755-3570 or mtmuseum.org
Where: Departs from the restored depot in Osceola, Wis., about an hour from the Twin Cities
When: Saturdays and Sundays through Oct. 28. Round-trip train to Marine on St. Croix (90 minutes) departs 11 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. Round trip to Dresser, Wis. (50 minutes) departs 1 p.m.
Cost: Tickets to Marine on St. Croix are $15 adults, $13 ages 5-15, $13 seniors ages 62 and older, free for ages 4 and younger, $40 family package for two adults and up to five children. Tickets to Dresser are $10 adult, $5 ages 5-15, $9 seniors ages 62 and older, free for ages 4 and younger, $25 family. (Additional fees for tickets bought online; no fees for phone reservations.)
Target audience: Fans of trains, Thomas the Tank Engine and history
Crowd-pleaser: Watching the engine run around
Avoid: Getting turned away. Book tickets for popular fall leaf-viewing runs in advance.
Tips: Mail a postcard from the train and check out the gift shop in the depot.
Special events: Brunch Train, 11 a.m. Sept. 16 (adults $49, children $39); Fall Leaf Viewing Brunch Train to Withrow, Minn., 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Oct. 14 (adults $49, children $39); Pizza Train, 5:30 p.m. Sept. 8 and 22 ($27 adults, $15 children, $27 seniors, $85 family of two adults and up to four children); Additional Fall Leaf Viewing Runs, 12:45 and 4:15 p.m. Sept. 29-30, Oct. 6-7 and Oct. 13; Pumpkin Train (three-hour excursion to a pumpkin patch) 10:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 1 p.m., 2 p.m. Oct. 20-21 and Oct. 27 ($20 adults, $5 ages 5-15, free for ages younger than 4.
