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It's called the dinner train and it rolls out of the Colt Railroad Terminal, north of Columbia, for the first time on Friday.

The train is a renovated Union Pacific Shuttle built in 1938 that ran the Los Angeles to San Francisco route until the 1970s.    

“The Columbia Star Dinner Train is distinctive and different,” Columbia Mayor Bob McDavid said. “It's gonna bring an experience that you don't get in a lot of places.”

The owners have turned four passenger coaches into table cars, placing two on either side of a modern kitchen car.  It's not the Orient Express, but there is an effort to present a more formal dining experience.  Each run can accommodate 244 dining passengers. Based in Iowa, the owner picked Columbia with hope of being able to attract customers from both Kansas City and St. Louis.

"We were able to pair up here with the convention and visitors bureau to offer overnight visitation, create that tourism package, get people to come in, and even after the train ride, stay in Columbia,” Dinner Train owner Mark Vaughn said.

The train will offer 2.5 hour dinner runs between Columbia and Centralia on Friday and Saturday evenings and a brunch run on Sunday mornings. Charters and special events are also planned. The train will pay a user fee to the city of Columbia, which owns the rail line. And the business will have the regulatory expenses of both a restaurant and of a train.

Dinners can expect to pay $70 dollars a person for the experience, a bit less on the brunch run.

The train will roll from the Colt Railroad Warehouse on Brown Station Road, just off Route B.

More information and reservations are available by calling 474-2223 or toll-free, (877) 236-8511.

Information is also available on line at dinnertrain.com.