By Dan Schlossberg
Trips & Getaways
Spring 2008

Pennsylvania Dutch Country. The name conjures up images of men in black riding horse-drawn buggies on country roads carved through rolling hills.

Until they get there, however, few visitors realize that the region also has a rich railroad legacy.

The steam-powered Strasburg Rail Road, America’s oldest operating short-line service, takes passengers on a nine-mile, 45-minute round trip through rural Amish farmland.

Across Route 741 from the East Strasburg station, the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania has tracks, trains, turntables and artifacts dating back more than a century.

Not far away are the National Toy Train Museum, featuring five operating layouts, and the Choo Choo Barn, with 135 animated figures and 17 running trains packed into a 1700-square foot display.

Thoroughly smitten rail buffs can even opt for overnight accommodations in the Red Caboose Motel & Restaurant, where rooms are in real cabooses and dinner is served in an old dining car. Owner Larry Demarco has transformed 19 Pennsylvania Railroad cabooses, weighing 25 tons each, into a 40-room motel that offers the most unusual overnight accommodations in Lancaster County. The Red Caboose marks its 40th anniversary in 2009.

For information, call 888-687-5005 or visit www.redcaboosemotel.com.

Many out-of-town railroad buffs begin their day at the East Strasburg Depot, a handsome Victorian edifice moved in nine sections from its original 1882 location, 20 miles away. It is even older than the line’s antique locomotives (including one built in 1902).

Since some of the Strasburg’s rolling stock consists of open-platform coaches from the turn of the century, fresh country air makes a pleasant substitute for air-conditioning. Photography is also easy from the slow-moving train — with Amish buggies most visible at any of the railroad’s four crossings.

The right-of-way is flanked by farms that depend upon wind, water and animal power, since many Amish disdain the use of electricity or motorized vehicles.

There’s also a unique tourist attraction called the Maize Maze, where kids carrying tall, flag-topped poles try to find their way through a maze carved out of a thick cornfield.

Also along the Strasburg route is Groff’s Grove, a picnic area typical of 19th century short-line railroads. A siding at the site marks the spot where trains headed opposite ways can pass.

The railroad, founded in 1832, runs daily trains during the summer, operates on weekends into December, then shuts down for the winter. Adult admission to Strasburg Railroad is $12 while admission for children 3-11 is $6.

Weather poses no problems for the adjacent railroad museum, a deserving member of the National Register of Historic Places.

Exhibit highlights include a 1915 depot, 62-ton freight engine, vintage World War II coach, and a Hall of Locomotives — all housed in a giant room designed to look like an old train shed. Counting the outdoor displays, the railroad museum has more than 100 locomotives, many of them retired from the Pennsylvania and Reading railroads.

Inside the museum, administered by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, visitors can enter the cab of a mighty steamer, view plush parlor cars, and even walk underneath a 62-ton steam engine in the simulated repair shop. The museum will salute Veterans Day weekend Nov. 8–9 with troop train rides during the day and a Swing Train ‘40s dance on Saturday night.

The Toy Train Museum, which doubles as national headquarters of the Train Collectors Association, also has hands-on activities — every Friday during July and August. Videos and railroad films run continuously, and visitors can run many trains themselves.

Strasburg is located in Lancaster County, tucked into southeastern Pennsylvania 57 miles west of Philadelphia.

The area is best known as home of North America’s largest contingent of “Plain People,” some 70,000 members of the Amish, Brethren and Mennonite faiths. Half of them wear traditional clothing and more than 25,000 still use horse-drawn vehicles.

Horse-drawn buggies are dark, travel less than 8 miles per hour and are especially hard to identify at night. But all display triangular warning signs with orange centers and red borders. The best bet is to leave impatience at home.

For many of the locals, little has changed since they fled Germany for religious freedom a half-century before the American Revolution.

The Historic Strasburg Inn is equidistant from the outlets and the railroad attractions. The home of an annual Summer Craft Fair, it is also next door to Gast Classic Motorcars, a year-round museum that does for auto enthusiasts what the Strasburg Rail Road does for train buffs.

For information, call 717-687-7691 or visit www.historicinnofstrasburg.com.

A camera crew visited the railroad Friday to take a special excursion and collect footage for an upcoming installment of the network’s “Modern Marvels” series.

Producer, writer and director Greg DeHart said he expects the Strasburg steam engine to puff across television screens sometime in March.

DeHart said his project will showcase the technology and the human story behind railroad locomotives.

The Los-Angeles-based documentary filmmaker returned from exploring locomotives in Panama two weeks ago.

After Strasburg, he said, he’ll travel to Canada to check out a modern-day locomotive builder and to France to see “the fastest locomotive on earth.”

DeHart will also visit the Brookville Equipment Corp., a steam engine maker in northern Pennsylvania, among other destinations.

Seven more shooting days are planned.

The Strasburg line, with its coal-black engines towing carefully restored coaches past Amish farms, will star in the documentary’s romance chapter.

Even if you don’t like locomotives, DeHart said, you can’t help but admire the massive symmetry of the steam engine.

“They look so complicated but there’s something aesthetically beautiful about them.”

Locomotion
DeHart, whose previous work for the History Channel included a 2002 look “Inside Pol Pot’s Secret Prison,” said he didn’t start out raving over locomotives.

But then he became fascinated.

Friday, he arrived at Strasburg to capture the sights and sounds of the iron horse with cameraman Dan Lantz and soundman Adrian Sam, both out of Philadelphia.

“We’re really here to get the ins and outs from a technical standpoint,” DeHart said.

In fact, said Hope Banner of Scheffey Integrated Marketing, which represents the Strasburg Rail Road, the shop where Strasburg rebuilds locomotives weld by weld was a key factor in wooing the filmmakers.

The shop is rebuilding a Rio Grande Southern narrow-gauge 10-wheeler trucked in from Colorado, among others, said machinist Erich Armpriester.

“Most of the parts are custom-made. Obviously, you can’t just go to Baldwin Locomotive supply and order parts off the shelf anymore.”

But you can still commute 3 1/2 miles by steam on the country’s oldest short-line.

Before setting out, Sellers, whose friends call him “Doc,” swooped his hands through the air, explaining the geometry of Engine 90.

The cylinder bone is connected to the piston bone, said Sellers, standing before steel drive wheels nearly as tall as a man.

Up in the cab with the filmmakers, he stomped on a pedal. Angled doors parted, exposing a firebox stoked to a volcanic red glare by fireman Richie Maggs.

A feather of steam hissed from the boiler-top safety valve outside, letting off pressure.

The engine was made in Philadelphia and hauled freight for the Great Western Railroad in Colorado before Strasburg got it in the late 1960s.

Each locomotive has quirks that make you love — and sometimes hate — them, said Strasburg Rail Road President Linn Moedinger.

So does the terrain, added Moedinger, who once piloted an engine up a slippery hill by getting a run for it, just as a car driver would.

Number 90 waited in the freezing morning air, panting softly.
That characteristic sound means the locomotive is pressurizing the air brake system, explained conductor Mark Andrews.

“If you don’t hear panting we don’t have brakes.”

Andrews called “All aboard!” and climbed into the turn-of-the-20th-century Boston & Maine Railroad coach he had helped restore.

Number 90 jingled its bell and chugged out of the station on its special journey (the line is normally closed to tourists in midwinter).

“It’s pretty exciting,” said Moedinger before stepping into the coal stove-warmed coach. “We’re thrilled” to be featured on The History Channel show, he added.

Driving in reverse for the first half of the trip as usual, the train ambled northeast up the track, introducing the filmmakers to classic “Road to Paradise” sights.

Seven bundled-up Amish kids stood at a crossing and waved as the coaches trundled by.

The train paused once and blasted its whistle across the bare fields until an answer echoed back.

The “ghost whistle” is supposed to be from an engine on the long-defunct Lancaster, Oxford and Southern Railroad, Andrews explained with a twinkle in his eye.

Coal smoke perfumed the air. Puffs of backlit steam whiffed past the coach windows, as if the train were flying in and out of the clouds.

In Paradise, where the Strasburg corridor parallels the trunk line between Philadelphia and Lancaster, Sellers shuttled Number 90 to the other end of the cars before heading back.

Suddenly, an Amtrak express shot past at more than 90 mph, dragging the falling-note blat of its horn behind it.

The scene made a perfect picture of locomotives then and now.

“If they would let us back on the main line,” Andrews joked, “we would’ve caught ‘em.”

The episode featuring Strasburg Rail Road will focus on locomotives and steam engines. The Modern Marvels crew filmed at the railroad all day on Friday, January 4th. The show is expected to air in March of 2008.

Watch WGAL news coverage.

Looking for a great family trip in 2008? One that may be drivable and if not offers domestic travel rates?