Railfanning

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It’s really hard to pick just one as a favorite. But in Pennsylvania, if you’re only going to ride one, it would have to be the EBT (East Broad Top RR) in Rockhill Furnace PA. For me, to call it a real train ride, the train has to be steam powered, be running on it’s original tracks, and pulling its original rolling stock. There are very few places left in this country where you can get a real old fashioned train ride. EBT is the only narrow gauge railroad still operating in it’s original location with all it’s original equipment east of the Mississippi. At one time the EBT was one of many narrow-gauge railways which once interlaced with the grand USA Standard Gauge railway system. What's really cool about this little railroad is that you not only get to see how the narrow-gauge and standard gauge tracks laced together, but they use "Y's" like I was telling you about in my layout section to turn their trains around.  And just across the street from the train station is the Shade Gap Electric Railway. How often can you ride a steam powered train and an electric trolley car in the same day.  The trolley uses the standard gauge tracks. At my last visit we took a tour  through the car barn to see lots of different trolley cars from all over the world. One still had it original Thomas Edison DC light bulbs that were installed just before leaving the factory, and guess what, after more the 100 years, all the bulbs are still working.  TAKE THAT GE!

Next on the list would have to be the whole Strasburg experience. There is so much to see here that you really have to move fast or else spend more then one day. Of course they have steam trains running all day and at scale speeds so you can see what it was really like to travel by train when your grand and great-grand mother used to go shopping this way. There is also a Hollywood movie star here to fuss over. Barbara Streisand’s movie "Hello Dolly" had some scenes filmed around this railroad and one of the coaches used in that movie is on display for you to tour. Across the way is The Railroad Museum Of Pennsylvania. Not only do they have many different locomotives and rolling stock to learn about, but the water from their fountain is the best water I’ve tasted in a long time. For some reason Berkshire-Type Locomotives really get my motor running, they have a beautiful restored model on display, plus an operating replica of the John Bull wood burning steam locomotive built by the Pennsylvania Railroad at the Altoona shops for the 1939 New York World's Fair.  You know what else was hot at the fair that year?  The promise of the first televisions. Just down the street is the Red Caboose Motel & Restaurant where you can sleep in a real caboose. The prices are quite reasonable when compared with the surrounding hotels. Even if you’re not spending the night, the restaurant is inside an actual rail car, they have a large souvenir shop, plus a caboose you can tour. Right across from their parking lot is our  Toy Train Museum. Lots of different operating layouts, President Reagan's collection was on display the last time I was there, they also show  some great old train related mini-movies and old TV commercials from yesteryear. And as you’re leaving Strasburg, don’t forget to stop at the Choo-Choo Barn, on route 741, to see a really incredible Lionel layout. They've done some recent upgrading. This layout is always looking good. 

Speaking of Steamtown USA, you’d think that I would have been trilled that millions of my tax dollars went into building this "historic" masterpiece. Well, despite the fact that I love trains with a passion, I was one of those who was against the whole Steamtown adventure. For one thing, we already have a Historical RR Museum. One that survives on donations alone. Plus you have to look at the pieces in their collection. Engines and rolling stock that were built and ran in another country, brought to a place where they would have never traveled, and then used as  passenger excursions on fright lines. Can you see my point? The EBT has been running on a shoe string budget for years. And our PA RR Museum runs mostly on railfan donations and volunteers to refurbish their collection. So what made some millionaire’s mostly Canadian rolling stock collection worth preserving that millions of our tax dollars went into completing the project? It’s as if a bunch of power hungry politicians invented a need to preserve history where there really wasn’t any. Sure, Scranton played and still plays a important role in our nations RR history. But not more so then any other Railroad. Care to take on the Railroaders Memorial Museum and Horseshoe Curve in Altoona PA?   Let me give one more example of what I’m trying to say to hopefully better illustrate my point. A lot of today’s so-called "Scenic Railroads" still operating in this country, are what I call "ALMOST" train rides. I won’t pick on any one railroad or name names, but one such excursion went something like this: First we have the engine which is a little diesel switcher engine designed and built to move cars around in a rail yard. Now, we add some coaches which were at one time elevated electric tram cars used is some big city before subways took over. Put this whole little train together and run it on old abandoned freight lines that never saw passenger service. As you ride along (or I should say crawl along) the rails, someone tells you about the "history" surrounding this little railroad. "And just up ahead folks, around this next turn, you will see where a wooden bridge used to cross the river, and on the other side was the site of the one of the worlds largest Religious Revival Camp Meetings ever held in the USA. There were as many as 4 and 5 trains stopping every hour to fill the demand of the church followers. The bridge is gone now, the flood of ’72 washed it away, and the park is all grown up with trees and weeds, but you can just imagine what this site would have looked like a hundred years ago." And if you close your eyes and wish really hard you might just imagine yourself riding a real train. See what I mean?  But since they've finished the museums, and have that nice Great Train Store in the Mall next-door, it's worth the visit at least once.  Just don't plan on riding the rails the same day.  Call or write for a list of excursion times and dates and then plan your trip accordingly.

My best straight friend Rod and myself did a really cool thing a few years back, we rented and stayed in a caboose which was set on a siding in the Allegheny Nation Forest in McKean County. (Did you hear the news awhile ago about some kids derailing this trains  engine and several coaches?) This railroad passes over the second highest railroad viaduct in the USA, an engineering marvel, the KINZUA Bridge. (301 feet high, 2,053 feet long, 6,715,000 pounds of steel, advertised as the 8th Wonder of the World.) I got dizzy walking across it, couldn’t look down. The train has a steam locomotive which was only built a few years ago in Japan. Japan is about the only country still building steam locomotives. The caboose was authentic right down to the cupola. The only thing they did to make it more "tourist" friendly was to install a small shower & a camp stove/sink/refrigerator combo at one end of the car. And a chemical toilet was inside one of the lockers under the cupola. It rained off and on the first day of our trip. We rode in the caboose the whole time. Then when we got to the National Park, we were dropped off on a siding for the night. Rod and me went exploring the surrounding area before it got dark. And it was so cool to come walking back along the rails and see our caboose inviting us home. It was an adventure for many reasons. First, we only had limited battery power. Since the batteries ran the pump to the shower and sink, if we wanted water, we had to refrain from using too much other power. So we used a flashlight to cook by. It got really cold that night and we about froze despite our sleeping bags warmth. We had gas heaters at each end of the car but since heat rises, it didn’t help much. My toes were froze the next morning and when I lifted the lid on my bunk I saw a hole in the floor of the car that you could see daylight shining through. When the train stopped to pick us up the next day, we decided to turn the heat up all the way since we were headed home. While riding up in the cupola we almost roasted. FOOLS, we should have slept up there last night, that’s where all the heat was going anyway. (Hard to believe we were both Boy Scouts?)

Ashland Coal Mine Tours has a little steam railroad. The cars you ride on were once used for hauling coal. Again, lots of history here, this time with coal production. Even though I love this little RR with their mine tour, if you’re going to do Steamtown USA in Scranton, you might as well also do the Lackawanna Coal Mine Tour. This tour is much longer and their museums really give a wonderfully detailed accounting of what it is like to mine coal. A special section is devoted to Child Labor that was plentiful back along time ago.

The West Shore Rail Excursions.  This one is not at the top of my list for many reasons.  It goes too slow and most of the scenic shots are the backsides of business buildings, including Bechtel's Dairy & Restaurant Cow's Butt!  But I've ridden their dinner train special a couple times and would tell you to try this as a birthday surprise or even a romantic dinner date with that special someone. (Hey, call your mother!!!)

The M & H (Middletown and Hummelstown Scenic Train Rides.   To be honest this is one the trains I was referring to when I said "almost" train ride.  But hey, "DJ" Smith the world famous  Trick & Fancy Roper who performs at lots of Rodeo's and is a High School Rodeo Member resides in Hummelstown, so it's not all bad.  And with so few scenic railroads yet available for us to ride, any train ride is better then none at all.  Each one has a story to tell, it's just some require a little more make-believe then others.

Gettysburg Railroad. Gettysburg has haunted house tours, the battlefields, and they do Civil War re-enactments each year.  That is pretty close to the way the little train in Bloomsburg used to be. Only instead of outlaws of the old west, were talking the Blue coats against the Grey coats (Or John Wayne against Mike Henry!!!) War brings me to the male bonding issue which I will get into on another webpage essay. For now let me just say, go to the re-enactment.  Do some touring and read some good books. You can also check out the Lincoln Train Museum while in Gettysburg.  They have some nice displays and  layouts.

This one, the Blue Mountain & Reading RR , offers both diesel and steam locomotive power.  They also run at scale speeds and talk about some of the history of the many "CANALS and LOCKS" in Pennsylvania. This train renewed my one nieces "excitement" about trains.  And this railroad will probably be the one that brings up the love and feelings I shared with my father about trains.  A few years before his passing, we both took vacation over my birthday.   We went back to several of the railroads I'd remembered in my youth, to celebrate my birthday.  We did Scranton, but the Blue Mountain & Reading RR will always mean the most.  I've haven't talked about ROMANCE too much, but on the day dad and I rode this train, it was raining cats and dogs.   And like I said earlier about thunder storms and trains, here we were riding this train, staring out the window at the falling rain and watching lightening flash across the sky.  The gentle sway of the railcar, the smells and sounds coming from outside, ROMANTIC is the only word I can use to describe the feeling.  LOVE perhaps might fill the bill here.   But the fact that dad suggested going for a train ride, on a day when the weather would have dictated staying indoors, and then driving and running around getting soaked just to ride the rails shows the kind of guy my father was. Sadly, I've heard rumors that this railroad is up for sale - out of business. I hope it's not true.  This is one of the reasons I try to talk everybody I know into riding as many trains as they can.   The old proverb "if you don't use it you loose it" fits this situation.

Ride the Hawk Mt. Line - Wanamaker,Kempton & Southern, Inc. This is a nice little train ride complete with steam locomotive power.  Here you can rent a caboose for a birthday or some other special occasion.  I did this for one of my nieces birthdays.  She wasn't trilled at all.  We were right behind the engine for the first half of our journey, and with the loud whistle and lots of smoke, I guess she thought it was some kind of fire breathing dragon or monster.  She really "disliked" stream trains for awhile after this one. But then we went for a ride on the Blue Mountain & Reading RR which runs at speeds in excess of 50 miles per hour, this was a faster more "amusement park" like ride and she decided trains were indeed fun once more and she isn't afraid of steam locomotives anymore.

Travel 40 years in 32 Miles, The fully restored 1913 Western Maryland Passenger Station located on Baltimore & Canal street is almost worth the visit in and of itself. But this Scenic Western Maryland Railroad also offers you a thrilling ride through a tunnel, and has a "Y" at one end and a turntable at the other end to watch the engine being turned. This RR makes for a wonderful weekend trip out-of-state.

Take the Cass Scenic RR in the State Parks of West Virginia. Here is a not just a railroad but an entire railroad logging town. The trains you ride here are doing just what they did a hundred years ago. They are hauling passengers (back then it would have been loggers) up to the top of the mountain where the trees were being cut. This whole town has a lot of history. I took a whole role of film of just the sidewalks alone.  The entire town is built on a hill, so they have these wooden sidewalks.  It's almost like the entire town is a huge interconnected tree house. The original Shay locomotives are the same ones used in both Cass and in the British Columbia rain forests for over a half century. The passenger coaches are actually refurbished logging flatcars. You don’t just learn about trains, you also learn about the lumber business as well. You should see the size of some of their saw blades. I learn something new at each train I ride.  In Cass,  I found out just how quite a steam locomotive can be.  In the movies you always see these loud screaming things, but while on top of Bald Knob, at 4,842 feet altitude, while enjoying the valley view and eating our picnic lunch, we all loaded up back in the train to go back down the mountain, and the engine was so quite that several white tail deer (the flightiest deer of all the species - I learned this on one of our many Lake Tobias' Safari Rides) came out and started looking for scraps around the picnic tables.  I never knew a steam engine could be so "still"...

At the The Mt. Washington Cog Railway, (or the Mountain of the Moon Railroad) located in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, you are again experiencing living history. This railroad was built for one purpose only, to take tourists to the top of Mt. Washington.  All these years later, you can still do the same thing, take a very unusual trip up the side of this mountain.  The little train engine that "thought it could and did".  When we went for this ride, our brakeman asked us "how many of you are riding today for the first time?" Most everyone’s hands went up. He says "yes, me too"….. I’m happy to report that his first day on the job went pretty smooth. One more odd little tidbit. Since Mt. Washington is 6,293 feet above sea level, we were actually above the clouds that day. It was pretty cool to see a cloud of smoke puff out of the locomotive's smoke stack, and just hang there in the air as the train climbs still higher. It was as if the train was making clouds.  (Sounds like a good start for a poem?)

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If I'm not mistaken, Pennsylvania used to have Colorado beat when it came to the number of "scenic" railroads one could ride. In Colorado - do Durango & Silverton, Georgetown Loop, Cumbres & Toltec and Cripple Creek & Victor. In Pennsylvania do East Broad Top, Strasburg, Altoona's Horseshoe Curve, Blue Mountain & Reading(if still open to public) and Steamtown. 

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