Strasburg Rail Road Serves Up A Tasty Trip
By Susan E. Lindt
Lancaster Intelligencer Journal
September 8, 2006

Lancaster County, PA - Leave the pistols with the conductor because you’re positively NOT allowed to shoot livestock or pheasants from this train. It even says so on your ticket. That’s because the Marian Parlor Car isn’t for riff-raff. With wine and cheese on tap, it’s a modern reference to the way it might have been on the short line from Strasburg to Paradise in 1917 or so.

Sure, there are some deviations. Today’s riders tend to be in shorts and tennis shoes when they arrive at the station in minivans for the special evening ride. The only horses you’ll see will be roaming the bucolic countryside that is truly the best Lancaster has to offer. And they’re paying $25 a person for the experience now, while they would have paid just a few cents way back when.

On the other hand, the Marian is a fine reproduction of the kind of coach train that might really have taken its good old time getting passengers a mere nine miles down the road and back. Stained glass windows, dark wood panels, fancy flowered carpet, monogrammed wine glasses - it’s less “Anna Karenina” than “Music Man,” but maybe that’s because everyone on this particular ride had so much fun, even breaking into a spontaneous round of “Happy Birthday” for a rider from outside the area.

“It’s very relaxing,” said Isabel Gambetta of Garfield, N.J., who rode North America’s oldest short line with her husband, Mario, and daughter, Cindy Torres.

“The speed, the wine, the view - just everything is wonderful,” Mario Gambetta said. “And the quality of the food was good, which isn’t always the case. This is worth repeating.”

The fare is fresh and local. A tasty variety of cheeses come from Strasburg Market Basket and are garnished with enormous strawberries.

Marian’s house wines come from Twin Brook Winery and include two reds and two whites. Also on tap is Lancaster Brewing Company’s Amish Four Grain and Franklinfest beers, plus a variety of drinks for teetotalers.

While you can drink as much as you like, with servers making trips through the car to fill your glass, you won’t be served anything but cheese until the car starts moving - another peculiarity of Lancaster County that makes a trip back in time seem, well, like just a few hours ago in some cases.

“This is a dry township, so we can’t start serving until the train moves,” said parlor car manager JoAnn O’Connell.

But that’s OK with most passengers. The scenery is sensational as the train makes its way through farm fields of corn and tobacco, past the Amazing Maize Maze and country roads with Amish pedaling their way home.

“It’s so beautiful as the sun sets,” O’Connell said. “Every trip is a little different. Each season has its own special thing.”

And unlike many Lancaster tourist venues, passengers genuinely seemed to enjoy one another, breaking down some of those barriers we’re so well known for. Groups mingled during the ride and seemed downright cool, in spite of the slightly bumpy ride and the heat (the Marian is, of course, cooled only by fans and country air spilling through opened, unscreened windows - consider a shot of Flonase before climbing aboard).

“Most of the time it’s pretty laid back and a really nice crowd,” O’Connell said. “You have nice people and you have mean people - but you only have them for 45 minutes.”

O’Connell said the idea for the wine and cheese evening train was to get more people out for the later ride. Strasburg Railroad still is a big seller with children, but the new offering has made a spot on the evening run nothing short of coveted. Seats are sold out weeks ahead of time and what started as a summer-only run already has been extended through October.

“This sounded like something different and fun to do,” said Don Cooney of Lancaster, who took the short line with his wife, Dianne.

If the idea was to make the Strasburg Rail Road something not just for kids anymore, it worked. Chuck and Marsha Erisman of Lancaster heard about the train’s late run on the radio and decided to take a ride - again.

“We were here over 15 years ago,” Chuck Erisman said, smiling, glass in hand. “But we didn’t have wine and cheese then.”

Wine and cheese train, through October, Fri. and Sat. 7 p.m., 45-minute train ride with wine, cheese, crackers and fruit (plus beer, mixed drinks and non-alcoholic beverages), Strasburg Rail Road, Route 741, $25, age 21 and over only.

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