Whistle Stop To Mark Strasburg RR Birthday
By Cindy Hummel
Lancaster New Era
May 17, 2007

LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa. - The Strasburg Rail Road will go back in time to celebrate its 175th birthday on June 6, and Gov. Ed Rendell is scheduled to play a role in the celebration.

Rail Road President and Chief Mechanical Officer Linn Moedinger said the event will include a re-creation of a whistle stop campaign of bygone days beginning at 11 a.m. at the rail road, along Route 741, east of Strasburg.

The governor has the event on his calendar, said railroad spokesman Hope Banner. Barring any kind of official state business, Rendell will take part in the event by reading a proclamation commemorating the charter of the railroad.

In the event Rendell cannot be there himself, Banner said the railroad will ask one of the other invited state representatives to do the honors.

When asked about the most significant achievements in the past 175 years, Moedinger said the railroad was one of the first to quit using steam in 1926. In that year, the Strasburg Rail Road purchased “gasoline-mechanical locomotive No. 1,” which it still owns.

Coincidentally, while the railroad was among the first to give up steam, it was also among the earliest to bring it back.

“We were one of the first, if not the first railroad to bring a steam locomotive back into service under ICC rules in 1960,” Moedinger says.

Visitors arriving at the railroad for the celebration will be greeted by music performed by the fourth-grade band of Lampeter-Strasburg School District’s Hans Herr Elementary School.

Rendell and Moedinger will board the parlor car down the tracks, so they can arrive in the style of an old-time whistle stop tour. They will both speak from the platform, decorated for the era of steam engines.

“This (whistle stop event) was a very common venue for celebratory and political speech making in the days when the passenger train was the primary mode of travel,” Moedinger said.

Next, the Hans Herr students will play a brief concert, under the direction of their teacher, Robert Shaubach. The repertoire will include the Strasburg Rail Road song, written by New York composer Joe Ambrosio in 1986. Hans Herr principal Andrew Godfrey will play the role of the railroad conductor/narrator for the song

The railroad was incorporated by a special Act of the Pennsylvania Legislature while Andrew Jackson was president. The railroad started as a connection between the Philadelphia and Columbia railroads.

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