After a four-month closure — the longest in its history — Prineville’s Crooked River Dinner Train will soon be back on the rails with a revamped program schedule officials hope will attract new visitors and bring in added revenue for the city’s railway system.

The dinner train was purchased by the city of Prineville in 2004 and serves as just one part of the City of Prineville Railway’s operations, which also include a freight depot and industrial rail service for businesses. In the past, the train has brought in thousands of visitors with its two main dinner shows — a murder mystery and an Old West-style train robbery. But now, with the city’s railway system suffering from rising operating costs and the slowing building industry, the dinner train is getting a makeover with new shows focused on Central Oregon history and other, more specialized trips.

“We’re going to add to what we’re doing on the train — we’ve got a lot of ideas, wine tastings, beer tastings, different things to have different options than what we’ve done in the past,” said Prineville Railway Manager Dan Lovelady. “We can hold 110 people, and we had an average of 87 per trip last year. So we’ve developed a great following in the peak seasons, and we’re just hoping to add more to what we offer so we can fill the train completely up.”

Lovelady said he and others are still working out the details of the new programs, but he said the first run of the season will be a Mother’s Day champagne brunch on May 11.

Prineville City Manager Robb Corbett said city officials are excited about the return of the dinner train, which was initially purchased to generate revenue for the railroad but closed in January amid concerns about high overhead costs and low traffic in the winter months. The closure also resulted in the layoff of the dinner train’s one full-time employee, an office manager, but that position has again been filled.

He said that while the city’s railway as a whole is still projected to lose money this year, the future is looking brighter as gas prices rise and more businesses look for alternatives to transportation by truck. And he said the dinner train, which last year brought in approximately $60,000 in July and August, two of its busiest months, could be a big help — as long as people sign up to ride.

“One problem we’ve had historically is an over-reliance on one individual (railway) customer or sector, so tourism is seen as a way of diversifying the customer base,” Corbett said. “The dinner train represents tourism, and the work that (Lovelady) has done is moving that into a position of generating money for the city again.”

Lovelady said he got a number of calls over the winter from people wondering about when the dinner train would be up and running again. Though he said it’s hard to predict how the venture will fare in a time of economic slowdown, Lovelady said he’s hopeful that the new dinner train programs will be a hit for locals and tourists.

“It’s important for all of Central Oregon because it adds another attraction for people who are coming into the area,” he said. “It just makes our area more attractive … and it really is a fun thing to do.”

To learn more

For more information about the Crooked River Dinner Train, visit www.crookedriverdinnertrain .com or call 447-4485.