Dinner train returns

Seventy-five years after a train regularly carried travelers from Tacoma to Mount Rainier, the Spirit of Washington Dinner Train has tourists riding the rails again.

The red-and-white 1950s vintage streamliner rolled out of Tacoma’s Freighthouse Square on Aug. 3 after Mayor Bill Baarsma and dinner train owner Eric Temple drove a ceremonial golden spike into the track.

The city and the dinner train’s owners have set up a 10-month trial to test whether the train, formerly based in Renton, can survive in Tacoma.

“We have every hope that this can become our permanent home,” Temple said.

During the 1920s, the National Park Limited carried an average of 120,000 passengers a year in its run from Seattle to Tacoma and onward to Mount Rainier. It stopped running in 1932, a victim of the Great Depression and the automobile.

The dinner train goes almost to Mount Rainier. It stops at Lake Kapowsin and then returns to Tacoma – all in a 3 1/2-hour trip.

“We’d like to travel closer to the mountain, but the only way to do that is to increase our speed, not the length of our trip,” said Temple. “Our studies show that 80 minutes each way is about the optimum.”

It also would take an estimated $7 million to $9 million in rail upgrades and a bridge repair to enable the train to reach Ashford and the gateway to Rainier.

Local government officials say the area’s congressional delegation is looking into whether federal funds can be obtained for those improvements.