Strasburg caught hauling freight! Oh my!

In choosing pictures for Trains magazine’s April 2010 preservation section, I couldn’t help to select one of Pennsylvania’s Strasburg Rail Road doing something so un-Strasburg like as to shock readers who land on page 87: hauling freight. The Strasburg, of course, is the east’s ever-popular tourist railroad in Lancaster County’s Amish country. Close to 400,000 take the short (4.1 miles between East Strasburg and the run around track at Lehman Place, also known as Paradise) ride, much of it through gloriously unspoiled cornfields, where Amish farmers still plow using the live version of horse power. Think Strasburg and you think of 2-10-0 No. 90 with a string of wooden coaches behind her drawbar and thousand of happy tourists in the seats soaking in the sounds of steam, the scent of coal soot and rich earth, and not so much as the first hint of industry to intrude on it all.
 
But then I’m forgetting that if you go looking for the Strasburg under tourist railroads and museums in the Pocket List of Railroad Officials, you wont’ find the railroad there. It’s still listed under freight railroads. And I’m also neglecting one of the most important aspects of the Strasburg: It’s run by folks who love steam, who love history, but are also folks who also love to stay in business and know that tomorrow the Strasburg will be there, and if hauling freight pays bills, they’ll do it.
 
So the railroad’s re-entry into freight last month is no fluke, says the railroad’s Stephen Weaver. Before the recession came along, the Strasburg was looking for ways to better use its railroad, and freight traffic, dormant since February 2006, was one answer.  
 
“Starting last February, I was assigned to aggressively market the railroad's potential as a freight terminal,” Weaver says. “All of this, of course, had to be done in a way that would not unduly affect the character of the East Strasburg terminal.  We found out what was moving in and out of Lancaster County, and then set about to capture some of that business.  Agriculture, with its constant demands seemed safer than the boom and bust cycles of the larger economy, so we focused on ag.”
 
Says, Weaver:  “We are taking the posture of your friendly, neighborhood freight agent.  I make the rounds of customers and local businesses, seeing if there is any way we can save them money through shipping by rail.”
 
Actually, what at first glance is out of character for the Strasburg is very much in line with what we’ve come to expect from this crew: Staying in business. So if on your next visit you run up on SW8 No. 8616 in a New York Central-inspired scheme, don’t be alarmed. It really is the Strasburg, still, as they slogan says, “on the road to Paradise.”

Photo by Kelly Anderson