Passengers aboard Coastliner Excursions (Courtesy photo)
For those who attend Damariscotta’s esteemed harvest festival, Damariscotta Pumpkinfest and Regatta, it’s all about the entertainment and laughter.
On Sunday, Oct. 8, it will also be about the total Pumpkinfest experience: a scenic train excursion through Maine’s Midcoast, round trip from Bath to Newcastle, with a stop to board additional passengers in Wiscasset.
Festival-goers will climb aboard Coastliner Excursions to enjoy the vistas not otherwise afforded along Route 1 and be delivered onto the sidewalk just above the festival.
“To board a train in or near your hometown and get dropped off right into the festival is the epitome of the simple pleasure we try to offer,” said Jed Weiss, executive director of Pumpkinfest.
The return trip, lasting about 1.5 hours, will leave after the festival, around 5:30 p.m. This one-day-only offering of the “Pumpkinfest Express” is a pilot trip to sample expanding train travel to and from Pumpkinfest.
“The Pumpkinfest Express can become the perfect solution to our traffic logistics and offer relief to those regional residents on Pumpkinfest weekend who aren’t attending the festival,” said Lisa Hagen, executive director of the Damariscotta Region Chamber of Commerce and Information Bureau. “We’d like to see train excursion service grow throughout our region while adding to the entire tourism experience year-round.”
The Rockland-based Midcoast Rail Service Inc. is on track to add more Midcoast destinations to its Coastliner Excursions.
“We all need to jump on the idea of convenient, clean travel into the small villages and towns of Maine for pleasure. We’re all selling ‘the experience,’” said founder George Betke.
Tickets are available online and in advance only at coastlinerexcursions.com. Availability is limited.
