Photos & Video: The new Carillon Park Railroad is open

5/2/2023

Carillon Historical Park held a 'Golden Spike Ceremony and Dedication' for the new Carillon Park Railroad today.

Photos & Video: The new Carillon Park Railroad is open

Ceremony and Dedication of the new Carillon Park Railroad

The Carillon Park Railroad is now open at Carillon Park,1000 Carillon Blvd. in Dayton. The train runs 3 times every hour during park hours. The cost is $5 per rider.

Carillon Historical Park hosted hundreds of Dayton History members for the "Golden Spike Ceremony" and dedication of the new Carillon Park Railroad on Tuesday, May 2.

Brady Kress, President & CEO at Dayton History drives the last "Golden" spike during the ceremony. Note, the spike is not actually made of gold!

The train is a full-size replica of the "Cincinnati," the first locomotive to pull a passenger train into Dayton in 1851 on the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railroad.

The locomotive and two open-air coaches can accommodate 120 passengers as it travels along a one-mile track around the perimeter of the park. The narrated tour will run three times per hour, year-round, through the open-air museum, enabling guests to learn about everything from the Wright brothers to the Great Dayton Flood of 1913.

The train was built by Severn Lamb, a company in Warwickshire, England that has built locomotives for theme parks across the globe, including the Disney Animal Kingdom in Florida.

Although talks with the company began in 2016, it took 18 months to manufacture and build the locomotive.

The specifications of the build were based on a miniature model of the 1851 locomotive, commissioned by Edward Deeds in the 1950s.

While the train resembles the historic original, it has been modernized with 21st-century technology to be a zero-emission battery, electric-power train. It took 10 weeks to ship the completed train across the pond.

The locomotive, named "Jane Ellen" has flowers around the name, including poppies, which represent Edith Deed's love of Belgium. Fun fact: Did you know that the Belfry of Bruges (a medieval bell tower in the town square of the Belgium capital) was the inspiration for the Deeds Carillon? Edith Deeds fell in love with the sound of carillon bells during a visit to Bruges during the 1930s and the rest, as they say, is "Dayton History".

The 3-foot-gauge, mile-long track features a depot from Bowling Green, Ohio, a 100' long triple-cell ConSpan bridge, and offers spectacular views of Carillon Historical Park. The railroad also travels through another of Carillon Parks newest attractions, the Old Montgomery Co. Fairgrounds Horse Barn No. 17 - a stable built in 1901.