Osceola and St Croix Valley Railway - Marine on St. Croix

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When:

Saturday, May 21, 2016 - 2:30pm - 4:00pm

Where:

Who: Everyone is welcome! This is for the entire family! Bring along grandma and grandpa, too, and don't forget your aunts, uncles, cousins, your good friends, and the neighbors!
Fun for all ages.

How much:
Cost for Adult/s and Child/ren ages 16 and up: $8.00
Cost for Child/ren ages 2 through 15 years: $8.00
Cost for Child/ren under the age of 2: $0.00

Please register by: Friday, May 13, 2016 - 5:00pm

Description

Travel though the beautiful St. Croix River Valley in vintage railway equipment -- children are allowed and encouraged to explore the cars which usually includes a variety of coaches, a box car or two (with grates over the open doors), a mail car, and a caboose. Volunteer crew members are always happy to meet passengers and answer questions.

Ticket price is $8/person ages 2 and up and free for children under the age of 2. Everyone, including babes-in-arms, must have a ticket! Regular ticket prices are $20/adult and $10/child.)

We are scheduled for the 2:30pm Regular Schedule to Marine on St. Croix, MN in coach seating. Round trip train ride is 90 minutes in length. The train trip is always done before we know it. It is one of my family's favorite things to do.

This is not a sit in the seat and watch the scenery go by ride (although you may do so if you wish). Families may be up, moving and exploring the entire length of the train. You'll want to travel from one end of the train and back again as each car is likely to be quite different from the next.

I recommend that you not invest a lot of effort into selecting your initial seats when you board as you will likely spend very little time sitting in them! Put your picnic lunch and other belongings in the rack above — both so that you will not to be burdened with them but also so that others may have the pleasure of trying out the same seats — and explore! Our group may be boarded onto reserved coaches, but we will still have the run of the whole train once we are underway.

Exactly which cars will be part of the train is hard to predict as it will depend on what's in the shop for repair, refurbishment, or restoration, how many other trains are running at the same time as ours, and how many passengers are on the train. You can find a list of available cars at transportationmuseum.org/equipment. Click on the car name for its history and technical specifications.

You can expect to see:

• meet all the crew — conductor, trainman, brakeman, fireman, and even the engineer.
• the junctures between cars — however, the railway asks that you not pause at the junctures
• tour the engine after the train trip — this is dependent on volunteer availability (the engine can also usually be seen from the first car of the train during the ride)
• nesting raptors on the bridge
• a variety of different dining cars — so that other families may enjoy the experience of dining-car dining, please clear your table in the dining cars when you have finished eating and move to coach seating. Food is permitted in the coach cars as well if you are unable to find an empty table in the dining car.
• a variety of different coach cars from different eras. Try out each one! Look for the Great Northern 1213 Streamlined Coach, a 60-seat coach designed for short-distance passengers with two restrooms/lounges and a small office for the conductor, this is one of the nicest streamlined cars in the museum's collection. There's also four additional Great Northern Streamlined Coaches, two Rock Island commuter coaches, and way too many more to list here.
• the windy open baggage doors of the Great Northern 265 Streamlined Baggage/Express Storage-Mail Car (There are grates over the open doors, so your children won't fall out, but crew members will ask your children to not climb on or rattle those grates). This is also where you'll find the concessions stand (snack food and trinkets)
• the Northern Pacific 1102 Heavyweight Triple Combine - my favorite and a very typical branch line car from between the world wars which includes coach seating, a baggage compartment, and a small railway post office which has been restored to look like it did in operation and is used for 1pm mail-catch demonstration (provided personnel are available).
• viewing platform at the back (or the front) of the Great Northern A-11 Streamlined Business Car (children may be allowed to sound the horn with the assistance of the conductor or other crew member)
• a variety of tiny bathrooms!

Map from Minneapolis to Osceola Depot:

Event information Cancellation information Additional information Registration form 

Payment information

Payment must be received by: Mon, May 16, 2016 - 5:00pm

1. Immediately after you register, you will be sent an email confirmation and payment instructions from admin(at)homeschoolrecess(dot)com.

   Make sure your email filters recognize this address as a legitimate sender. If you don't receive this email, please check your spam, junk or bulk mail folder. Contact the organizer if you are unable to find it; if you receive no response to your email, please call the organizer. 
    

2. Please plan to send your payment the same day that you register.

   You are not officially registered until the organizer receives your payment. 

   If you are unable to send payment immediately, please contact the organizer to make other arrangements. This protects the organizer from non-payment due to payment instructions blocked by overly aggressive spam protection. To help the organizer identify you in the registration database, please forward your payment instructions to the organizer along with your request. 
   
   

3. When the organizer records your payment, you will be emailed a payment receipt from admin(at)homeschoolrecess(dot)com.

   The organizer updates payment records daily. If you've sent your payment and haven't received a payment confirmation, please contact the organizer by email or phone.
    

4. If the organizer doesn't receive payment within 4 days of your date of registration or by the payment deadline, whichever comes first, your family may be removed from the registration list.

   You will be notified with an email from admin(at)homeschoolrecess(dot)com should this unfortunate event occur.
    

5. If you need to cancel your registration, please do so via an email request to the organizer.

   Non-payment is not an acceptable way to cancel your registration.  

Event information Payment information Additional information Registration form 

Cancellation information

Cancellation deadline: Fri, May 13, 2016 - 5:00pm

TO CANCEL BEFORE THE DEADLINE: 
(1) Please let the organizer know as soon as possible via email. 

TO CANCEL AFTER THE DEADLINE: 
(1) Let the organizer know as soon as possible via email. 
(2) No refunds can be made as the organizer has already paid for your tickets. 
(3) To avoid empty seats, please attempt to transfer your tickets to another family by posting the availability to the HSAdventures Yahoo Group (and elsewhere as appropriate). 
(3a) Any reimbursements should be handled privately between you and your substitute. 
(3b) Please let the organizer know about the substitution. 
 
TO CANCEL ON THE DAY OF THE EVENT: 
(1) It is not cool to just not show up. Please let the organizer know if you are unable to attend — via email, text message or voice mail. 
(2) To avoid empty seats, please attempt to find a last-minute substitute for your family by posting to the HSAdventures Yahoo Group (as well as through any other other methods at your disposal). 

Event information Payment information Cancellation information Registration form 

Additional information

Please arrive by:

Please plan to arrive no later than 2pm in order to have plenty of time to find parking, check in with the organizer, visit the bathrooms and otherwise prepare for our train to leave promptly at 2:30pm. Boarding is scheduled to begin at or about 2pm. 

Please plan to be early to avoid being late due to inadequate maps, confusing road signs, road construction, heavy traffic, parking difficulties, inclement weather or uncooperative children. There's stuff to do and see, wonderful people to meet, and beautiful weather to enjoy (at least, I'm hoping for beautiful weather). 

If you find that despite your best efforts, you are running unavoidably late, please let the me know! You may reach me by phone or email on the day of the event. 

If you arrive late but the train is still at the station, you may retrieve your tickets from the ticket office inside the Depot. If the train has left the station, you will be out of luck! 

Where to meet:

As soon as you arrive, please retrieve your tickets, receipt and name badges from the organizer who will be standing by the depot wearing a bright yellow hat and a Homeschool Adventures T-shirt. (If it is raining or exceptionally cold or windy, the organizer may choose to stand inside the Depot in the lobby area ... not in the gift store.) 

Expect a conductor to pass through the train punching tickets!

Food policy:

You may bring a picnic lunch to enjoy on the train. I recommend that you bring at least a light snack to eat. You might not think your child(ren) will get hungry during a 90-minute ride, but eating on the train is part of the experience, and your child(ren) will want to join the others who are enjoying the dining cars.

There are a variety of snack foods for sale in the Streamlined Baggage/Express Storage-Mail Car along with an assortment of gift shop items.  

Please do take care to share the tables in the dining cars. If your family is not actively enjoying a meal, please stow your belongings in an overhead rack and explore the many other cars of the train (or at least relocate to a coach car). If you don't find seating in the first dining car you enter, please check the next one as the train usually includes several. Should there be no spaces for your family in any of the dining cars, eating is permitted in coach as well.

Alternate plans:

The Minnesota Transportation Museum may choose to delay, re-route or even cancel the train ride due to severe weather or track conditions. Should that occur, any refunds or exchanges offered would be solely at the desecration of the Minnesota Transportation Museum. The volunteer organizer for this event cannot offer refunds after the cancellation deadline as she will have already transferred all funds to the Minnesota Transportation Museum to pay for the group's tickets. 

Parking information:

Free parking down the hill in the designation spots on Depot Rd. Please leave the limited number of spots in the small lot by the Depot for those with disabilities.

Directions:

GOOGLE MAP: http://bit.ly/oscvdepot
MAPQUEST MAP: http://tinyurl.com/2sgofs

DIRECTIONS: 
The Osceola & St. Croix Valley Railway's Osceola Depot is located at 114 Depot Rd in Osceola, Wisconsin, about a one-hour drive from the Twin Cities area. Take I-35E or I-35W north out of the Twin Cities. Take the first exit (Hwy. 97) after I-35W and I-35E merge and go east until you come to Hwy. 95. Travel north on Hwy. 95 about 5 miles to Hwy. 243 where you'll see a sign for Osceola. Turn right (east) and proceed across the St. Croix River into Wisconsin. Osceola is immediately east of the St. Croix River. Once in Osceola, you'll come to Wisconsin Hwy. 35. Turn right (south) and proceed under the railroad bridge, and immediately turn right again onto Depot Road. The Depot is one block ahead. You will find visitor parking spaces along Depot Road leading up to the depot.

Map from Minneapolis to Osceola Depot at https://goo.gl/maps/kmMJg

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