June 14th 2025
Cordials: 6:30 pm Train Depot
Dinner: 7:30 pm Northern Lights
Dine aboard the Northern Lights at the Galveston Railroad Museum’s Harvey House Dinner, Saturday, June 14. Enjoy the same legendary customer service and menu experienced for decades by rail travelers nationwide. The evening includes cordials, a seated dinner, wine, dessert, and entertainment. Reservations are required, $150 per person, all inclusive, limited seating at tables for four. Reservations may be made online at www.galvestonRRmuseum.org/Harvey House, or call (409) 765-5700. Dress is 50’s railcar dining.
Founded by Fred Harvey in 1878 to serve the growing number of train passengers, the chain of Harvey House restaurants was located along the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway in the American Southwest. Travelers accustomed to ‘dingy beaneries’ with ‘rough waiters’ were pleasantly surprised by the attractive and courteous servers who became known as the Harvey House Girls. Galveston’s Union Passenger Terminal Station was the site of a Harvey House Restaurant and remained in operation until 1938.
Today, a few Harvey Houses remain as first-class hotels located at the Grand Canyon, Winslow, Arizona, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Harvey House Museum located in Belen, New Mexico, operates a small diner serving menu items that today are referred to as ‘comfort food.’
Now operating as The Center for Transportation and Commerce, visitors to the Galveston Railroad Museum regularly walk through the space once occupied by the legendary diner to view exhibits. The original marble floors, ceiling, and light fixtures remain intact. The only thing missing is the counter. A Harvey House exhibit and photographs are on display in the depot where an original uniform is on display, and Harvey House cookbooks are available in the museum store.
The museum’s dinette car, Northern Lights, offers an immersive dining experience. Northern Lights, built in 1990 by the Bombardier Company for Amtrak as a dinette, and acquired by the museum in 2023, complete with serving galley and four seat dining booths, is open daily as an exhibit and accommodates families attending the annual holiday event, The Polar Express Train Ride. It is available, for a fee, for private functions based upon availability.
Situated on five acres of railyard, the Galveston Railroad Museum is an immersive experience rich in transportation history. Visitors are encouraged to climb aboard trains for a tactile approach to learning about the golden age of rail and to see how people traveled in the past. Sleep cars, dining cars, post office, cattle car, military transport, and much more. A 100 year old steam driven engine, caboose rides, and hand powered baggage cars provide stories from the past, as do the Ghosts of Travelers Past, lifelike sculptures in the train depot, that are reminiscent of an era where people from all walks of life gathered in the depot to launch their journeys.
Proceeds from the Harvey House Dinner benefits educational outreach including the Carmody Railroad Library, Young Ingenuity Youth Group, teacher curriculum for grades K-12, and sensory tours and activities for autistic individuals.
