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The Canadian Pacific Railway's Holiday Train is set to roll westwards through Canada and the U.S. Midwest, with Weyburn to again host the last stop of the U.S. Midwest train on Friday, Dec. 17.
The train will roll in to Weyburn at 7:45 p.m., just off Railway Avenue and Fifth Street.
This is the 12th year that the Holiday Train has been rolling, raising food and money for food banks across Canada and the U.S., while providing Christmas musical entertainment along the way.
In December of 1999, CP Rail started running a freight train decorated with thousands of Christmas lights across Canada, and then in 2001, they launched a second Holiday Train to travel through the U.S. Midwest; the last number of years, this second train has come up into Canada with stops at North Portal, Estevan and finally at Weyburn.
The train is 1,000 feet long with 14 decorated rail cars with hundreds of thousands of LED Christmas lights. At each stop, the Holiday Train provides a box car stage with a lineup of great musical talents, and a corporate donation to the local food bank, and the community is urged to also bring donations of food or money for the food bank as they attend the event.
This year, the featured performer will be Melanie Doane, a Halifax-born Juno-award winning artist who has had a number of top 40 singles, a Canadian Radio Award for Most Charted Rock Artist, and has toured with the likes of Jann Arden, the Lilith Fair festival, and Great Big Sea.
Her latest album was "A Thousand Nights" with an assortment of original and cover tunes. She had formerly been featured on the 2007 and 2008 CP Holiday Trains.
Kelly Prescott will also be a featured performer on the train; she released an album with her brother, Kaylen, in 2009, and upcoming in January, will release a solo album with blues and soul songs co-written with her husband, Adam Puddington.
