All Things Train: Ronks, PA

Well, we surprised the little man with a trip to Ronks, Pennsylvania. This area is mostly known for the Strasburg Rail Road and all things train.

He had a blast!

The first stop was the National Toy Train Museum. It houses two display rooms. One with many shelves of toy trains. The larger room with about ten model train displays.

Who would have thought you could spend two hours pushing buttons on the train displays? Not I. But that he did. Outside of the museum rooms, in the main atrium, was a store and an area for kids to play with a train set and watch a Thomas the Train movie.

When the National Toy Train Museum closed, we headed over to the Red Caboose Motel to check into our personal caboose for the evening. Of course, he had to ride in the 25-cent train spectacular before we went to our room.

He was so tickled that we were staying in our own train car. He loved it! The outside of the train cars may look a little rusty (I assume they’re retired cars), but the inside was nicely refurbished. Ours had two bedrooms with full sized beds, a full bathroom with running water, a small table to eat at with two chairs, an apartment sized refrigerator, a microwave, and a tv.

Attached to the check-in building at the Red Caboose Motel is the coolest Casey Jones restaurant I’ve ever been to. You walk into the store and towards the bar where there is a hostess stand. The hostess will lead you to a table in one of two train cars used for dining.

The food was really good, but the best part was the view. It overlooked farm fields straight towards the Strasburg Rail Road station. On the road, we saw many Amish horse and buggy carriages go by. Most importantly, we happened to be eating when the steam engine train was leaving the station. Ya’ll, I had one happy kid.

The following day, we went on our steam engine train ride. It was raining a good deal, but it did not dampen our spirits.

At the beginning of our train ride, the steam engine was facing right towards us. Which was perfect because I surprised him with his own train whistle. Each time he heard the train whistle, he whistled too.

It ended up being a wonderful train filled weekend with a couple of new toys.

I couldn’t leave this area without doing some Amish shopping near Bird-in-hand and eating at a smorgasbord. We thoroughly enjoyed Miller’s Smorgasbord Restaurant within minutes of our train extravaganza.

I highly recommend the Ronks, PA area if you have a train lover in the family. There are other train related places nearby to enjoy as well. Until next time….”Toot toot”….