Central Pasco & Gulf Railroad

On my first visit to CP & G Railroad my daughter and I had an absolutely perfect day. There is nothing I would’ve added or changed about the experience. So, I rated it as such. But a return visit, on Easter, showed that I sort of jumped the track a little. Things were not executed nearly as flawlessly on the second go round and some underlying warts were exposed.
The reason I returned to the railroad during Easter weekend is because I remembered the owner of the railroad really talking it up at Christmas time. He told those of us that were there that on the Saturday of Easter weekend he takes the trains out, stops at a designated spot and lets the kids get off the train to hunt for eggs. At the end of that, they return to the station and can have their pictures taken with the Easter Bunny. It sounded like a cool experience. So we returned.
The first thing we noticed when we checked in was that there were a lot of people here for the trains. It was like three or four times the size of the Christmas crowd. My wife and I registered our daughter, put on our arm bands and then went to stand in line at the station. Here we waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about twenty minutes in line one of the volunteers got a brilliant idea to change the way the line moved so that people would be forced to go through the train station building. This is where the Easter Bunny was. It was a great idea, everyone could now get their picture with the Easter Bunny while waiting in line. About the time we exited the building, which meant we were just a train or two away from finally getting on, another volunteer came along and took the chain down that was redirecting the line. This meant that some people decided they didn’t want to go through the building and walked through the area where the chain had been removed. This cut about fifteen minutes off their wait time. Of course the people who were coming out of the building were pretty miffed that these people were allowed to cut and weren’t forced to go through the building. An argument ensued between volunteers and people waiting to get on the trains. Eventually it was sorted out but the man who runs the trains was not happy. He could be seen yelling at one of the volunteers. After a thirty to forty-​five minute wait, we were finally able to get on a train.
The egg hunt was fun for my daughter. She loved finding them, picking them up and shaking them. Unfortunately, because of the long lines and the people waiting to ride, the conductor rushed us quickly through the hunt. My daughter had to just grab a bunch of the eggs and open them later. When we returned to the train, we realized that someone had taken our seats. That meant that my wife and I had to sit apart on the ride back.
One of the cool things about the railroad is that you are allowed to ride all day long. At Christmas my daughter and I took three trips around. Because of the wait, we only rode the Easter train once. A big disappointment considering how far we had driven to ride the trains.
The day can be summed up perfectly by the fact that as we departed from our train and moved off to the side so my daughter could open the eggs she collected the train we had just gotten off of jumped the tracks. It wasn’t a big deal, no on was hurt and it was fixed in a few seconds, but it just sort of symbolized the fact that the CP & G Railroad is not yet ready for the big crowds that Easter brought. Hopefully they can figure something out before the Fourth of July trains get rolling.