Make tracks to Strasburg

By Rob Owen

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (TNS)

STRASBURG, Pa.

Parents instinctively want to re-create their favorite childhood memories for their own children.

When we adopted our son, now 5, he arrived with an innate love of trains that reflected and even outpaced my own childhood devotion to all things railroad.

It was only a matter of time before we retraced my childhood visits to railroad sites in this Amish county town, with our tow-headed child in tow.

Strasburg Railroad

Since 1959, the Strasburg Railroad has offered excursion rides along its tracks through Amish farm country in lovingly restored coaches that are in extremely good condition, especially compared to some other short-line railroads across the country.

Each ride – pulled by a steam engine – is a little less than an hour, and the conductor’s patter hasn’t changed much from what I remember when riding these rails as a child. The conductor still points out the turkey farm the train steams past and teases guests with the notion of a “ghost train” across the valley that responds to the Strasburg Railroad’s whistle.

“We pay that ghost $27.50 a day to sit there and blow that whistle back to us,” the conductor joked about the echo.

The Strasburg Railroad does offer more coach options than it did two decades ago, including reasonably priced lunches in air-conditioned dining cars. Just last month the Pinball Pendolino Car debuted, offering guests a chance to play pinball while riding the train.

Red Caboose Motel

For the train fan who visits Lancaster County, there’s really no other choice: You must stay at the Red Caboose Motel, a fixture along the Strasburg Railroad tracks since 1969.

Each of the motel’s 40 rooms is a retired train car, 38 cabooses plus one baggage car and one mail car.

Larry DeMarco bought the motel in 2005, and he’s renovated many of the cabooses over the past decade. The original room design from the 1970s was marked by tacky composite wood paneling; the cabooses with makeovers feature less dingy accommodations with neutral-colored walls, larger bathrooms and sometimes reconfigured bunk beds in the caboose’s cupola.

“When I got it, the bank owned it and only four or five rooms were even functional,” DeMarco said. “We had to upgrade the plumbing, the electrical and some other stuff.”

A self-described real estate investor, DeMarco was living in Philadelphia when he bought the Red Caboose Motel.

“I always wanted a home away from home, and I thought it was something my kids would love,” he said.

“I like trains, but I wasn’t a train buff. I’m just an adventurous guy who likes trying things.”

The motel includes a dining car serving breakfast, lunch and dinner that’s leased out to a restaurant operator.

“We have so many rail fans and former Red Caboose kids who bring their kids, it’s just great,” DeMarco said. “This place will be here forever because we have so many fans and then there are people just discovering it, too.”

Train museums

Three train museums sprang up within a mile of the Strasburg Railroad, two devoted to toy trains and one that displays the real deal.

The National Toy Train Museum, situated directly behind the Red Caboose Motel, displays toy trains from the 1800s to the present. It’s more suited to collectors or aficionados of Lionel trains and the like from times gone by. But there are also buttons to push to activate several train sets that offer some appeal to train-crazy kids.

For travelers with time and budget for just one train museum, the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania is the best bet. This museum boasts an impressive array of railroad equipment – steam and diesel engines, various types of train cars – housed inside a 100,000-square-foot exhibit hall.

The Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania is officially dedicated to collecting, preserving and interpreting objects relating to the history of railroading in Pennsylvania, but it also offers a lot for children, including an educational wing filled with toy trains to play with, a diesel locomotive cab simulator and a steam engine mock-up where kids can shovel “coal” (pieces of black foam) into an engine’s boiler.