Events and Activities : Details about Saturday train ride from CF to Vinton

The Cedar Falls Chamber of Commerce is bringing a group of 250 people to Vinton tomorrow via the Iowa Northern Railroad! Once again, we have a great opportunity to showcase our community and give visitors a glimpse of the great town we get to call home! Here is a rundown of the planning that has taken place and what to expect. Also, we have an opportunity for you to help! Please see the information below for details. This has been an interesting week with details slightly changing at the last minute, but I think overall, with your help, we can provide the visitors to Vinton a great time and show them why they should come back to visit again with friends and family!

1. The train will be arriving at the Vinton depot at about 10:30 am (originally scheduled for 11:30am). This is great news for us as it gives people a little extra time in Vinton. They will board the train to head back to Cedar Falls at 1:15pm and pull out of the station at 1:30pm (just a little earlier than originally anticipated).
2. Lunch will be served at 11:30 at the courthouse. This will provide people a chance to get off the train, use the restroom, look around the depot, do some shopping and then eat around 11:30am with plenty of time to shop a little more and get back to the train by 1:15pm. Another minor change that took place due to a family emergency with the Pork Producers is that we will be having Merchant's Grilling provide the meal. I spoke with Keith (Cedar Falls Chamber & coordinator of trip) about this and he is fine with it and is just glad we had a back-up available.
3. We need to get Tables/Chairs from the Vinton Fire Department at 9:00am to be set-up in front of stores underneath the awning and on the courthouse lawn. This will provide visitors a place to eat, not to mention, put them directly in front of stores and provide extra exposure for businesses. We have 24 Tables and about 170 chairs from the VFD, however, we're going to need help moving them from the Fire Station to the downtown at 9:00am and back to the Fire Station at 1:30pm. We are also looking for another (Free) source of tables that we could borrow as we're short about 8 tables. We would love help getting our tables/chairs set-up at 9:00am and torn down at 1:30pm. It'd be great to know if you can help ahead of time, but feel free to show-up even if you don't let me know!
4. Karr Septic will deliver Port-a-Pot's. 6 will be next to Ray Lough's Law office and 4 will be at the depot. He is helping us out by giving us a break on them and charging a total of $650 for them.
5. Maps and brochures have been delivered to Cedar Falls and are being put in a packet of information for the train riders. They will have it before they arrive in Vinton.
6. We have shuttle's lined up. One van from Virginia Gay Hospital and one 18 passenger bus/van lined up from Benton County Transportation (we may get 2 if they can find another driver, but hopefully it's a nice enough day that people will like to walk the short 3.5 blocks downtown). One of the shuttles will be at the courthouse at 12:15pm to pick-up people who want to go to L marie Boutique. They will then be delivered back to the depot by about 1pm to board the train at 1:15 for departure at 1:30.

The reason this trip is happening is thanks to the Cedar Falls Chamber and the Iowa Northern Railroad. When Cedar Falls asked Iowa Northern where a good destination would be, they suggested Vinton because of the way we handled previous trips during the Palo Holiday Express. This says a lot for the Vinton Community and I think we should all be proud of the community we have the opportunity to represent.

We would have loved to have them join us longer and also provide our guests with an opportunity to eat at our local restaurants, however, Cedar Falls requested we provide 1 centralized location where all participants could get lunch. They originally wanted to be served by the Pork Producers, however, this had to be changed at the last minute due to an family emergency. They also have a schedule they need to keep as they will be doing more activities when they arrive back in Cedar Falls in the evening.

We hope you all find this to be a fun day and we encourage you to help out in whatever way you may be able to. Again, we could use some help at the Fire Station at 9am to load tables & chairs and then again downtown at 1:30pm to take them back.

We'll see you Saturday! Enjoy the weekend!