Dinner in the diner, nothin’ could be finer…” runs through my mind as Bay Creek Railway No. 316 chugs toward us. And, sure enough, as we board the vintage car turned restaurant, “Chattanooga Choo Choo” is playing from the coach’s gilded speakers.

While the railway’s president, Jeff Foster, calls the two-hour dinner excursion,
running exactly one hour north of Cape Charles and exactly one hour back, a trip
to nowhere, we call it a journey back in time.

My companion, John, and I remember the long train trips of our childhoods
when dinner in the dining car came with linen-covered tables and uniformed stewards. But even if you’ve only heard about traveling on trains in style—or seen a late-night movie where love blooms over martinis in the club car—the Bay Creek Rail-way will give you a taste of the romance of the rails. 

Our motorman for the night is Monte Grissom, a retired banker, and one of four local retirees who eagerly volunteered to train as operators. Grissom is originally from Dallas, Texas, where the railcar was first in service almost a century ago. “But we didn’t meet until she came here to Cape Charles,” Grissom says. 

That was two years ago, after she was rescued from her role as a Texas farm cabin—an inglorious retirement from her years carrying passengers on the Texas Electric interurban line.  From her 1913 debut, No. 316, then powered electrically, carried passengers, ensconced in comfy lounge chairs, city to city, until 1948 when the interurban lines were discontinued.

Foster and his father, Dickie Foster, both real estate developers, have painstakingly restored the coach that’s now diesel powered. Her paint color, a pre-World War II Pullman green, is an olive-brown-black blend so unique, Foster says, it stumped even Home Depot’s guaranteed paint matchers. A few nicks in her gilt trim make No. 316 seem that much more authentic.

The restoration was a labor of love—and frustration—for Jeff Foster, who started with
zero knowledge of rail cars. Now, well versed in No. 316’s idiosyncrasies, he recalls how a single bearing problem posed a two-month delay and the challenges of installing heat and air conditioning.

The coach was built old school, Foster says, when cold weather meant “put on a coat,” and summer’s heat meant “open a window.”

The problems pale, however, in the glow of the coach’s lamp-lit mahogany interior. Red velvet drapes the entryways, stained glass tops the sliding windows and even the tiny water closet (powder room) is vintage style.

The car is equipped to carry thirty people at tables for two or four. On this Friday night, we have a dozen passengers traveling with us, mostly middle-aged couples on vacation or celebrating birthdays and anniversaries. The shorter, day runs apparently draw more of a family crowd.

Duke Ellington’s “Take the A Train” accompanies our departure, rhythmically in time with No. 316’s jouncing over the rails. Although the coach is geared to run fourteen miles per hour, it rarely tops eight. As our drinks arrive, sloshing in their glasses, we understand why.

“We originally had soup on the menu,” Foster had told us earlier. “What were we thinking?”

Passengers may take a few minutes to adjust to the roll and sway of the car but our server, Begonia Moyano, deftly balances a tray of appetizers. We discover that the “Cajun-seasoned angels on horseback” listed on the menu are perfectly poached scallops wrapped in bacon, on a bed of corn and smoked tomato sautÉ. (Meals are catered by Aqua Restaurant in the new Bay Creek Resort Club and Club Marina outside the historic district of Cape Charles.)

Farm fields and backyards slip by as our coach rolls through the dusk. An occasional light flashing red in the windows signals highway crossings, where, during the day runs, train chasers wait to jump out of their vehicles, snapping photos as No. 316 goes by.

The golden arches of a highway McDonald’s shine through the night just as we’re served a poached pear and blue cheese salad with candied walnuts and port-soaked raisins. No burgers and fries on this menu.

Glenn Miller’s “Pennsylvania 6-5000” introduces our entrée of crab-stuffed flounder, and draws us further into the mood of sixty years ago. By the time Moyano serves the desert course, a trio of profiteroles, we’re humming along with the chorus of “My Blue Heaven.”

And we aren’t the first. Foster fondly remembers the ninety-plus-year-old woman who was so taken by the ambience that she burst into song and serenaded the other passengers.

“How many waiters or waitresses get to experience this?” Moyano asks.
“I feel like I’m becoming part of history.”

And there’s plenty of railroad history on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Bay Creek Railway follows the original line first developed by railroad executive Alexander Cassatt, brother of impressionist artist Mary Cassatt, and William Scott, a Pennsylvania millionaire, in 1882, linking New York City and Norfolk. The new line created an Eastern Shore building boom as towns sprung up along the line. But business fizzled with the Depression and the development of the automobile. Rail passenger service disappeared in the 1950s, but at least one freight train a day still travels the Eastern Shore, crossing the Bay on a barge to Norfolk.

As No. 316 clatters back to Cape Charles, with the passengers chatting over coffee, we wonder if the Fosters’ dining excursions might help bring passenger
service back to the Eastern Shore. The father-son duo are currently restoring another historic rail car and see the Bay Creek Railway as one more step to rejuvenating the Cape Charles historic district. 

Like the song says, we’ll always remember the trip on No. 316 as one of our favorite “sentimental journeys.”

Exploring the Eastern Shore Railway Museum

Opened twenty years ago in the center of the small Victorian town of Parksley, Virginia, the Eastern Shore Railway Museum is a vivid capsule lesson in the history of the Shore and its railroads.

Parksley was developed in 1885 as a planned community centered on the railroad. As the rail line prospered, so did the town. Now numerous vintage rail cars and a 1906 passenger station filled with Delmarva Peninsula railroad artifacts from the mid-1800s are a nostalgic tribute to that history.

Wandering by old Pullman and dining cars, we found two men laboring on a 1927 observation car—Wayne Parsley, president of the museum’s board and chief tour guide, and volunteer Johnny Bates, an ardent train buff who has restored several cars. Who better to show us around?

Parsley led us through the Pullman car that ran on the Wabash Cannonball in the 1950s and was later converted to an eighteen-berth crew car to house railroad workers on train wreck duty.

He showed off a caboose that a local teen had reclaimed as an Eagle Scout project, a stainless-steel dining car that had run along the Shore from 1947 to 1986, and a 1950 sleeping car, originally part of the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad. And there was still more to see. Plan to spend a few hours here. The trains—and Parsley’s enthusiasm—are irresistible. —P.S.

Open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Mon. through Sat. and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sun. Adults, $2; kids under twelve, free. 757-665-RAIL

When not riding the rails, free-lancer Phyllis Speidell writes from Hampton Roads, Va.

Bay Creek Railway dinner excursions run Friday and Saturday nights, $65 per person plus tax and gratuity.  A one-hour pizza run, Saturdays at noon, focuses on families. Adults, $18; children, two to twelve, $14. Advance reservations required. 757-331-8770, http://www.baycreekrailway.com