Retired Wiscasset school teacher Deb Olson had been to Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington Railway Museum in Alna but never ridden the train. She got to on May 5, as the all-volunteer nonprofit hosted the Wiscasset Area Chamber of Commerce’s “Business After Hours.”

She was very excited, Olson said on-board with husband Karl Olson, of Karl Olson & Associates in Wiscasset, before the train started the trip north. Moments earlier, museum president Stephen Zuppa told the guests the train they were about to get on was 120 years old and once had chandeliers. “And this was what the farmers rode to town on. Things were not only utilitarian then, they were beautiful.”

Olson smiled through much of the evening ride. Asked later what she thought of it, she said, “I think it’s absolutely amazing. The car is beautiful. The ride was fun. And it takes us back to a time where this was the kind of transportation that everybody went on ... and nowadays people don’t get to do it so much ... Everybody should come and do it,” she added.

Conductor-volunteer J.B. Smith of Nobleboro welcomed the chance to take the chamber on a ride. Of the three towns that were in the railway’s name, Wiscasset is the only one the railway ever traveled to, he said. And the museum keeps its dairy car on Wiscasset’s creamery pier, he noted.

Ed Kavanagh of Wiscasset’s Museum in the Streets asked Zuppa earlier about the state’s idea to redesign parking near the pier. Zuppa said he was glad that the Maine Department of Transportation included the museum’s car in its rendering, but he was concerned about the placement it depicts, in front of Sprague’s Lobster.

He wouldn’t want the car to block people’s view of Frank and Linda Sprague’s business, he said. He was also concerned that a long ramp would have to be added to get up into the car, Zuppa said. “So we need to work out those details, and they’re certainly not insurmountable. We plan on being a presence down there for years to come.”

The chamber will also be on the pier this year with its new information center, Board Chairman Monique McRae said. It should be ready to open by Memorial Day weekend, she told members.

The chamber has picked up seven new members since its annual meeting in March, McRae said, to cheers. Applause also broke out among the two dozen-plus attendees when Zuppa told them that the museum’s restoration of Locomotive No. 9, which they would be riding behind, had been described as a Smithsonian-quality restoration.

Ten thousand hours of work and $225,000 went into the restoration, Zuppa said. “So we’re quite proud.”

The museum is one of the chamber’s original members. A nonprofit has the same goals as a business — to pay the bills and to grow, Zuppa said in an interview. He told attendees about a new project the museum faces. A locomotive’s boiler needs replacing and building two consecutively saves a ton of money, so that’s the plan, he said.

“That’s going to keep us out of mischief.”