What Happened to Ossawippi Express Dining Cars After Restaurant Makeover?

The Ossawippi Express Dining Cars was a restaurant built from vintage railway cars on the shore of Lake Couchiching in Orillia, Ontario. Its episode of Restaurant Makeover, a series on Food Network Canada and HGTV Canada, aired on July 31, 2006, as the thirteenth episode of the second season. Rotten Tomatoes' season listing says only that a restaurant made of train cars got a new look; nothing read describes the problems shown, the changes to the menu, staffing or name, or the relaunch.

The series paired a chef with a designer to rebuild a restaurant on a small budget and a tight schedule, and TVmaze's listing for the show says the owners put up half of the funding, watched the demolition and returned to see the finished room.

A PR.com release datelined Orillia on January 13, 2009 said the restaurant opened in 1972, had been featured on HGTV and Food Network's Restaurant Makeover, and welcomed groups, birthdays, meetings, bus tours and weddings. The restaurant's own web address, ossawippi.com, returned an undated page saying it had operated since 1972 and that the owner bought it in 1992; the page carried no closure notice.

Posts on the dardpi.ca railway forum dated June 23, 2012 and August 2012 described the cars being dispersed. One poster, relaying secondhand information, said a baggage car and the solarium car would be scrapped on site, four cars were bound for Port McNicoll to become a restaurant beside the Keewatin steamship museum, the Nova Scotia car was going to the Toronto Railway Museum, and an electric interurban car was going to the Halton County Radial Railway. The posts were unconfirmed forum reports. Google Places lists Ossawippi near the port in Orillia, on Mississaga Street East, postcode L3V 7L8, and marked it permanently closed when checked on October 19, 2026. Wikipedia's list of renovated restaurants also marks the restaurant as no longer open.