For my son's sixth birthday, we decided to invite his entire kindergarten class for a railroad express party. We contacted our our local train station and rented a private caboose and
train cars for the party.
The children were invited with a custom made train ticket exclusive for his birthday that the children were to bring with them to board the train ride. As the children arrived they were greeted by the train's conductor who took their tickets and gave each of them engineer's hats as they boarded onto the caboose or train car. The parents sat in the train car while the kids mostly headed for the little red caboose. On the train ride to the park, they were each given a bagged lunch. The kids lunch was placed in a white bag that we decorated with a train stamp and consisted of PB&J sandwiches cut into train cabooses with a cookie cutter, drink box, chips and red handkerchief for a napkin. The parents received a similar lunch but with a sandwich of their choice. When they were getting off the train to the park, they were each given another white page stamped with the words "Thank You" and a train. These bags were used to hold the pinatas' goodies that they each grabbed. Each pinata was a train filled with candy, train whistles with each child's name on one, stickers, train bubble blowers and yo-yo's. The boys piħata had special train bouncy balls while the girls had various plastic jewelry items. The picnic tables were covered in red plastic and the trees had railroad crossing signs that said Alexander's 6th Birthday Express. They played tag the choo choo, like duck duck goose but with choo-choo, caboose as the words and choo choo checkers where the checkers were vanilla wafers stamped with either a red caboose or a black engine as pieces. We ended the time in the park with a special cake that was a 3-D scene with a train engine, caboose, and coach car sitting on top of black string licorice tracks heading for a tunnel made from a turned over cupcake covered with icing colored to depict it perfectly. The plates were black and white railroad road signs and the utensils were red colored. We also brought a cooler full of various juice boxes and bottled water for the park. We should have brought hot chocolate as it started to snow in the middle of April that afternoon! The party ended with a scenic train ride back to the station with a beautiful backdrop of snow dusted over the woods and with the children blowing train whistles and wearing handkerchiefs and engineers' hats. It was a birthday party that my son and his friends still talk about!
