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I'm a railroad brat. My grandfather was Yardmaster for the Milwaukee Road so I grew up riding the rails. I married another railroad brat, my hubby's father having worked for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. So we had a love affair with trains going, even joining our local model railroading club, collecting trains and making an HO model railroad layout.
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When a mother approached me wanting to plan a Railroad birthday party for her 4 year old son and his friends I couldn't wait to get started.
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I liked the parties I planned to be as realistic as possible. Renting a train car as a venue was out of the question, too cost prohibitive. I wanted the boys to feel as though they were really on a train and somehow a house just didn't cut it in my mind. I was wracking my brain trying to come up with a suitable venue. I was driving to a nearby town for a medical appointment when I saw and remembered it...
Representative of the actual car
I must've driven past it a million times. For years it had just been sitting in the side yard of a house, falling further and further into ruin. I got out and peered inside. It was a disaster.
Representative of actual car interior
Still...was what I was thinking even possible? I decided I'd stop at the house and talk to the owner after my medical appointment.
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I phoned the head of our model railroad club.
"Hey, would the club be interested in volunteering to restore an old coach car that's in terrible shape, if I can get permission from the owner to restore it?"
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Jim said he'd check with the club members and get back to me.
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I stopped at the house after my appointment and knocked on the door.
Funny how life's synchronicities work. The lives of two apparent strangers were about to be changed and neither one of us was aware of it.
An elderly gentleman answered. I assumed he didn't get many visitors as he seemed really suspicious of me. I asked him how he'd acquired the coach. He told me he'd worked for the Milwaukee Road, had bought the car when he'd retired and had planned on restoring it until his health took a nose dive.
"Really!" I said. "My grandfather was Yardmaster for the Milwaukee Road! I grew up riding the Hiawatha."
"Who was your grandfather?" Glen asked.
"Bill Reed," I said.
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Glen stared at me intently, suddenly looked shocked and exclaimed "Oh my word...you're SCOOP!"
Only my grampa's railroad co-workers knew he'd called me Scoop. They'd all called me Scoop.
"The one and only," I replied, stunned.
"Well, I'll be jiggered!" Glen laughed. "You've grown up on us!"
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Yup, Glen and my grandfather had been co-workers and friends and I'd known Glen as a little kid, riding the rails. Glen and I spent the rest of the afternoon chatting away.
"Glen," I finally said. "How would you like to have a crew restore your railroad car and in return, you let me hold a birthday party in it for a group of little boys?"
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He was completely on board, agreeing to pay for all of the materials we'd need. Jim called me back and said they were on board with volunteering to restore the old coach. I told him I was at Glen's and he could come out and see the car for himself. A few members of the club showed up. We agreed it would be a monumental task but so worth it to preserve a piece of Milwaukee Road history. Glen was over the moon his coach would finally be restored to its former glory and he and "the crew" hit it off immediately,
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​We spent every moment of our free time for the next 2 months working on the old coach - stripping out the interior, replacing broken windows, replacing any rotted wood, etc. We'd bring a chair out into the yard for Glen to sit in and supervise us. We wanted him to be involved in every step of the restoration, to feel a part of it.
"Yup, she's looking mighty fine, mighty fine!" he'd say.
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When the restoration was nearing its completion, I called my client and asked her if she had time to take a short drive to see the venue for her son's party. Her jaw dropped when she saw an actual railroad coach. She even invited Glen to the party.
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We'd designed the interior of the car so Glen could rent it out for parties if he wanted to and bring in a few extra bucks. The interior was similar to the one shown below but painted in the Milwaukee Road colors. We also installed 2 ceiling fans.
Representative of the interior restoration
I phoned my client and asked her if she'd like to take a short drive to see her son's birthday party venue. She was shocked to discover it was an actual railroad car and said the boys would be so excited. She even invited Glen to the party.
The guys had even come up with an activity for the boys and built everything necessary for that activity, including a corrugated trestle, tunnel, railroad crossing gates, semapahores, and even a mock railyard with turntable. They also made wearable train cars for each of the boys.
The only other staging I did was to pile some old suitcases next to the coach and use a wooden stool from my garage for the boys to climb up on in order to board the coach.
For my part of the staging, I didn't need that much.
I'd found a cardboard ticket station I really liked on Amazon but it cost $245 (Seriously??!!! It wasn't gold plated corrugated!) and I said the heck with that!
I copied it and made my own for under $10.
tablescapes
I couldn't find any train themed tablecloths I liked so I bought a roll of fabric and made my own.
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Although since discontinued, I bought 12 of the table favor sets shown below left from Amazon.
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Tablecloth fabric
For the centerpieces, I used my Lionel O gauge trains as I had 5 sets of them, just enough to cover the 5 tables in the coach we were using as dining tables. (I always told my dad I wanted train sets for Christmas and he'd obliged. LOL)
If you don't have any train sets, you can make a very detailed DIY cardboard train - that actually runs if you want to take it that far!
And if you don't want to build something like the above, then just go with a very simple centerpiece.
Train Centerpiece Ideas
invitations
For the invitations, I bought editable train tickets and printed them out.
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The boys would present their train tickets when boarding the coach.
My fellow railroad clubbers had really gotten into my train party planning so had volunteered not only to help me with the preparations but to be there the day of the party dressed as an engineer, a conductor, etc.
staging & Props
activities
YARDMASTER SAYS
I'll warn you ahead of time on this one...it takes some time to put together. My guys came up with this activity and built all the components of it themselves out of cardboard - as shown in the staging section of this article.
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There are no winners or losers in this game. The boys had a ball with it (as did Glen, the Yardmaster) and they learned what was involved in a train's operation in getting from point A to point B, coupling and uncoupling cars, etc.
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This activity is part obstacle course and a railroad version of Simon Says..."Yardmaster Says".
Each of the boys put on their wearable train cars. We put titles of railroad jobs in a hat and had each boy pull a railroad job - engineer, conductor, brakeman, coal stoker, etc. Then the boys lined up to form a train.
(Make sure they have their party favor train whistles with them)
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They had to move as a train through the obstacle course, not only obeying the semaphore signals but the instructions of the Yardmaster:
"You're approaching crossing gates. What do you need to do when approaching a crossing?" (All the boys began blowing their train whistles)
"We need to uncouple the coal cars in the middle of the train and park them on a side track. How are you going to do that?" (The boys would have to figure out how they would move as a train to do this.)
"Engine, you need to couple up with the rest of the train!" (The engineer would have to back up to the boys behind him and they'd "couple " their cars by the boy behind the engineer putting his hands on the engineer's shoulders. To uncouple cars, they'd take their hands off the shoulders of the boy in front of and behind them.)
CRAYON TRAINS
"The train needs coal in the firebox!"
(The train would stop and the boys who were coal stokers would have to toss a sufficient number of beanbags into a Toss the Coal in the Hole game to restock the firebox and get the train moving again.)
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I was worried the kids would get bored with this game but I guess only males know how the male mind works. The boys loved this game. I don't know who was having more fun - the kids, Glen or the 'big kids' from the model railroad club!
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And it did teach the boys to work as a team.
Although no longer available, we'd gotten each boy a 1" silver clutch back pin he could pin on his conductor's cap for their outstanding performance as a train.
I bought a package of multi colored foam board and using a photo as a template, cut out 12 train puzzles similar to the one at left, using an Exacto knife.
Each boy got a puzzle and we had 3 rounds of races to see which boy could put his puzzle together the fastest. The kids took their puzzles home as party favors.
CRAYON TRAINS
Oriental Trading Co. had this 24 piece set of wood trains the boys could color and take home with them. So we sat them down with crayons and let them have at it.
I did make this activity a bit more interesting by offering to make their colored trains into Christmas tree ornaments by hot gluing a piece of monofilament fishing line to the back of the train from which to hang it on the tree.
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I also gave them glitter they could use to dress up their ornaments.
Tip: Lay a drop cloth down beneath their work area so you're not cleaning up glitter off the floor for weeks on end!
TRAIN RIDE
Many locations have miniature trains that offer rides to the public for seriously cheap prices. What would be more appropriate for a train party than a train ride? And some locations even offer the option to very inexpensively rent the entire train!
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One of our nearby parks has a miniature train for kids to ride so we packed up the boys and took them to ride the miniature train.
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MODEL RAILROAD LAYOUTS
As a club, we'd spent years building our club model railroad layout (HO gauge) so took the boys to see it and allow them to play with the trains. (They said it was the best part of the party)
They did ask a lot of questions...how did we build this, how did we build that? so the guys showed them and the kids were fascinated with the actual building process of all the different layout elements.
We helped each of them build an element in miniature and let them permanently add their creations to the layout.
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The party was a smashing success according to the kids. And I was so glad it was as there was a sad yet happy ending to this story and party.
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Two weeks after the party Glen passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. All of the guys and I went to his funeral as we'd become really close to Glen, even visiting him after the party. It was there that his son told me that in the last days of his life, Glen talked about that railroad party non-stop, how happy he'd been being a part of it and how grateful he was to finally have his coach restored. His son said he hadn't seen his dad that happy in years. The family even buried Glen in the railroad party outfit we'd put together for him.
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For me, this was what party planning was all about - making people happy and making treasured memories for them, as we apparently had for Glen. I have to believe someone 'upstairs' was orchestrating our reunion after so many years, that enabled the party to happen on Glen's coach and for him to leave this life a happy man.
menu/food
While we had electricity in the coach we didn't have a kitchen so everything on the menu would have to be made ahead and carried in so my client and I kept the menu very simple.
HAM & CHEESE AND PB&J TRAIN SANDWICHES
Use aluminum foil mini loaf pans as 'train car' serving containers. I even filled a couple of my O gauge Lionel train cars with snacks.