Thomas Makes Tracks For Strasburg Station
Railroad offers many attractions for youngsters
The Patriot News

The lure of Thomas the Tank Engine, with his big eyes and wide grin, is just one reason visitors hop aboard the Strasburg Rail Road. Its open coaches, allowing fresh country air to breeze through, and its luxuriously restored parlor car also are among its attractions. Steam engines, such as the storybook character Thomas, take visitors back to a simpler time of travel and commerce.

Thomas returns tomorrow to Strasburg, where he’ll be stationed through June 20, giving 25-minute rides that depart every half-hour, rain or shine, from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturdays and 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday-Friday. Tickets, at $14, are available by calling (866) 468-7630 or visiting www.strasburgrailroad.com. A “Day Out With Thomas” also will feature Thomas & Friends-themed storytelling, video viewing, live music, photos with Sir Topham Hatt and arts and crafts.

Touted as the most authentic train experience of the era, Strasburg Rail Road was established more than 40 years ago by a group of enthusiasts. The engines and railcars are so meticulously restored that they have been featured in movies such as “Raintree County,” “Hello, Dolly!” and “Thomas and the Magic Railroad.”

Strasburg also offers a separate, 45-minute journey, in which visitors travel past Amish buggies and farm fields still plowed by horses and mules. Travelers may stop at an old-fashioned picnic grove and enjoy a snack while trains rumble by. On board are some of the same men who served as conductors, brakemen and engineers when the Strasburg Rail Road first opened as a tourist attraction.

“Some of our engineers are doctors and lawyers who maintain their FRA [Federal Railroad Administration] certification just so they can come to Strasburg on weekends and run the trains,” conductor Walter Minnich said.

Each train has a narrator who tells the railroad’s history spiced with a few tall tales. For details, call 687-7522 or visit www.strasburgrailroad.com.