All aboard from last weekend’s super fun adventure to the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum! A mere forty minute drive from our place, it was a welcome change from our longer distance travels. The museum is a rather impressive labor of love, with 161 volunteers and five paid staff restoring and maintaining trolleys, track, and buildings (one of them is partially solar powered!), giving tours, and running the gift shop. I love to witness cross-generational interest in just about anything, so when I discovered that our operator and conductor (who punches actual tickets!) were both young men, and the littlest traveler on our trolley was a positively giddy two-year-old, I was pretty jazzed, too.
They have a short informational film about the history of the street car, and our conductor went into other details, the majority of which we didn’t know, and I won’t spoil for anyone interested in visiting. They have trolleys from just about every era in every stage of repair. The wooden one was saved from detonation when a hurricane submerged it under water. My favorite, which also happened to be the one we rode on, was a 1940’s model that hailed from Philadelphia. It was a stunner, with fine interior and exterior paint and examples of vintage advertising, too. “Give her an electric mixer. She’ll love to use it!”
I really can’t recommend it more highly, from the charming volunteers to the pleasing rumble and squeak of a trolley rolling down the track. Oh, and if Santa is your jam, they have a special Santa Trolley coming soon!
and staircases!
