Both of us are boarding the Bardstown dinner train. Bourbon country sliding past the window, dinner in front of us, and the kind of nostalgia that doesn’t try too hard. The dinner train is the Bardstown experience the trade press tends to overlook — and one of the better ones.

What is My Old Kentucky Dinner Train?

My Old Kentucky Dinner Train departs from the historic 1860 limestone freight depot at 602 N. Third Street in Bardstown — listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Founded in 1988 by R.J. Corman Railroad Group, the operation runs a two-to-two-and-a-half-hour, sixteen-mile excursion along former Louisville & Nashville Railroad track between Bardstown and Limestone Springs.

Service runs aboard four restored 1940s-era dining cars pulled by Corman EMD GP locomotives. The on-board bar carries thirty-five-plus bourbons — Bardstown is the self-styled Bourbon Capital of the World. Themed runs include the Murder Mystery, Bourbon Tasting, Valentine’s, and Polar/North Pole Express.