The weather is not the only thing changing in Baldwin City. A number of restaurants and food businesses have opened in recent weeks.
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The newest of these additions is the Fremont Dinner Train.
“When I first got to Baldwin it was really small town,” said senior Morgan James, who has been a resident of Baldwin City since the second grade. “Now that we’ve seen things come and go, you realize it’s harder for smaller restaurants to work, but I do think that Baldwin is steadily growing to be a bigger and better town.”
After running for 24 years in Fremont, Neb., this business has “run out of track time” according to its manager Bruce Eveland.
“The end was in sight for us,” Eveland said. “We needed to find a new location that would welcome a dinner-type location and Baldwin has a lot of drawing power.”
Eveland said that this “drawing power” comes from Baldwin City’s central location between many big cities such as Olathe, Kansas City and Lawrence. The train currently operates four dining cars, which its website boasts have “unique and distinct personalities.” These dining cars are to be moved to Baldwin in a cycle; each car must be moved by truck, and it takes a little more than two days for it to arrive in Baldwin.
What will be known as the Kansas Belle Dinner Train will run year-round and offer up to 168 people a formal, five-course dinner on Fridays and Saturdays and a three-course Sunday afternoon meal. The dining cars will run from Baldwin City to Ottawa on the Midland Railway.
Customers have two options for dining. First, riders can opt to have a regular dining format or they can, at an additional rate, be part of the live entertainment section.
Entertainment options the train hopes to bring in range from melodramas and music to murder mysteries and World War II shows.
While the price was $54 in Fremont, Eveland expects a slight increase in prices due to an increase in food and labor in Baldwin.
The business is anticipated to drive in tourism and create a new faction of both full-time and part-time jobs. Because the move is “enormously expensive,” Douglas County and Baldwin City itself gave the business grants and loans.
“The help justified the move for us,” Eveland said. “We hope to return the favor. Everyone does recognize the economic impact we can bring to the table. They needed to get a hook to get people into Baldwin and hopefully this is it.”
The train brought in over 8,000 people per year in Fremont, and Eveland believes that number may be higher in Baldwin City. He says they have already booked a group from Omaha for March and with out-of-town tourists, the need for lodging and accommodations will be pertinent.
“You have to have what it takes to work in Baldwin.” James said. “A lot of money is lost when students leave, so you have to able to maintain revenue when students aren’t here, and I hope this does that.”
James hopes the Kansas Belle Dinner Train will start operating in early December, before the start of the holidays.
