5 Best Sights in Strasburg, Pennsylvania Dutch Country

This 12-acre historic homestead offers guided tours of an authentically furnished house and one-room schoolhouse. The property includes a barn, blacksmith shop, smokehouse market, and outdoor picnic grounds when the weather permits. Mini-shuttle-bus tours of the area are also available.

What started as a family hobby in 1945 with a single train chugging around the Groff family Christmas tree is now the Choo-Choo Barn, Traintown, USA. This 1,700-square-foot display of Lancaster County in miniature has 20 trains, mainly in O-gauge, with 150 animated scenes, including an authentic Amish barn raising, a huge three-ring circus with animals and acrobats, and a blazing house fire with fire engines rushing to the disaster. Periodically, the overhead lights dim and the scene turns to night, with streetlights and locomotive headlights glowing in the darkness.

The National Toy Train Museum, the showplace of the Train Collectors Association, displays antique and modern toy trains. The museum has five huge operating layouts, with toy trains from the 1800s to the present, plus nostalgic films and hundreds of locomotives and cars in display cases.

The Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania and the Railway Education Center, across the road from the Strasburg Rail Road, holds 75 pieces of train history, including 13 colossal engines built between 1888 and 1930; 12 railroad cars, including a Pullman sleeper; and memorabilia documenting the history of Pennsylvania railroading. The museum features a railroad town, a gift shop, and a learning center.

The Strasburg Rail Road marks more than 175 years of history, and visitors can step back in time to travel the rails on a scenic 45-minute round-trip excursion through Amish farm country from Strasburg to Paradise on a rolling antique chartered in 1832 to carry milk, mail, and coal. Called America's oldest short line, the Strasburg run has wooden coaches pulled by an iron steam locomotive. Eat lunch in the dining car or buy a box lunch in the restaurant at the station and have a picnic at Groff's Grove along the line. Visit the Reading Car No. 10, a restored business car that carried the top brass of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad back in the early 1900s. Kids are crazy for the Thomas the Tank Engine shop and special events. Trains usually depart hourly. Dinner trains run April to December.