A Voyage on the Cape Cod Dinner Train

When it comes to trains, it’s hard to avoid drifting off into nostalgia, even if you’re decades too young for the Golden Age of Rail. Let’s leave commuter trains aside. Instead, picture the ones we used to take in what seems like a more civilized—and certainly more relaxed—time of travel. People like the idea of forward motion, whether towards a fixed destination or simply around and about pretty places. So it’s no wonder that Condé Nast Traveler reported last year that luxury train travel enjoyed an uptick of 43% from 2023 to 2024 or that the iconic Orient Express will, according to its website, welcome guests in mid-2026 to “relive the legend aboard 17 original Orient Express cars dating back to the 1920s and 1930s, adorned with exceptional décor.” Stories of elegant trains have become more common, Hollywood successfully rebooted Murder on the Orient Express in 2017, and classic movies frequently transport viewers back to times when rail travel seemed elegant and fun. The Master of Suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock, frequently used trains in his movies, and the dining car scene in North By Northwest in which Eva Marie Saint’s character tells Cary Grant’s Roger Thornhill, “I never discuss love on an empty stomach,” is an all-time great moment in cinema.

Keeping pace with the increased interest in train travel—and doubling down on romantic nostalgia—the Cape Cod Central Railroad has been clickety-clacking up and down the tracks with a series of special excursions built around the notion that travel ought to feel like an experience. They run lunch, brunch, and dinner trains from spring through the holidays, giving passengers a...