The CTA's holiday train is now out and about. Do other cities and countries have holiday trains around this time? And do cultures that don't celebrate Christmas run trains decked out for any of their major holidays? Below pictures from the Chicago Sun-Times.
Non I’ve ever heard of in Britain (definitely not where I live would it based aswell), the Coca Cola truck will be the closest thing to this here.
Christmas themed trains (Polar Express, Elf Express and Santa Specials etc) are only done on preserved railways. Of course we do have Christmas lights and a tree in most cities and towns but nothing runs on the network decked out like the above trains. We do have railtours which take people to Christmas markets in various cities though but the trains are not lit up.
Here in Zürich we have a Christmas Tram. It’s for children only though it’s not in general service. It is however always driven by Santa.
Canadian Pacific (Now CPKC) has their annual Holiday Train. CSX has the Santa Train, which usually runs thru Clinchfield country In 1992, UP had 3985 lead it as it was dressed as Clinchfield 676
Forgot KCS (CPKC) had there own Holiday express as well. I'm curious on how CPKC will handle the holiday trains as we get further into the merger.
Many years ago, Laira Depot would decorate the interior of one of the Class 108 DMU's based there for Santa Specials on the Gunnislake Line at the weekend. The problem was, although we tried to keep the set on local workings the cyclic diagramming of the Laira sets took them up to Bristol where on at least one occasion a somewhat over zealous station manager decided all that frippery was a fire hazard and decided to remove it. I had to quite forcibly remind him that the set had been decorated by staff at their own expense and that the Santa train proceeds were donated to charity. He was instructed to place them neatly in a box which was then secured in the Guard's compartment so that once back on Laira the staff could put the decorations up once more. Needless to say, after that incident, the changeover notes on the (then) Provincial desk in the Control had a note appended at the top that the set must be kept local to Plymouth and certainly go no further than Exeter.
