Overview
Your 45-minute steam train ride through scenic Lancaster County farmland is only the beginning! Stop for a picnic, try railroad activities at the station, tour our restoration shop, relish a ride aboard First Class, or enjoy seasonal special events!
Strasburg, Pennsylvania—a Rockwell-esque small town in the middle of bucolic Pennsylvania Dutch Country—is home to the oldest continuously operating railroad in North America and the most-visited heritage railroad in the continental United States. Chartered in June 1832, the Strasburg Rail Road began serving the community of Strasburg with both in antebellum America when covered wagons and canals were still commonplace.
Lancaster County’s centuries-long anachronism is juxtaposed with the county’s role in developing the nation’s transportation systems. The area known worldwide for its picturesque “Amish Country” also produced the Conestoga wagon, birthed the idea of the steamboat through native son Robert Fulton, and hosted some of the earliest and largest canal systems during the antebellum period. By the 1820s, Lancaster was in a position to play a leading role in the creation, development, and productivity of the nation’s railroad system.
For the next 107 years, business at the Strasburg Rail Road ebbed and flowed until 1958 when a group of local investors purchased “the Methuselah of railroads” to not only keep it alive but to develop it for bigger and better operations.
Today, the railroad has an active freight department and world-renowned restoration shops while still dedicated to its mission to provide an early 20th-century steam railroading experience in a safe, clean, and friendly environment.
