Here's to the Pennsylvanian

It's hard to tell just how much any one thing impacts our lives. I felt surprised today when I started contemplating my connection to an ordinary, everyday thing: Amtrak's intercity passenger train that runs the length of Pennsylvania. As I at last completed work on my locomotive to model the familiar passenger train, I took some time to look back on how it has affected my life. I'll share a little bit of that here.

The Pennsylvanian is a name that applies to three Amtrak trains. I didn't know this before, but apparently the Pennsylvanian has been running since 1980, and has been the only passengers service from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh since 2005. (Admittedly, I corrected this history after this article was originally uploaded... oops!) Train 43 runs Westbound every day, and 42 and 44 are the Eastbounds (44 is a later-than-usual Sunday departure, hence its different number.) I first encountered the Pennsylvanian on my birthday in 2008. I had moved to college just days before, and was in the midst of a bunch of introductory activities. On a day of games at the local park, I was sitting out (I had one round to sit and watch,) and as luck would have it, an Amtrak train went by. I paused shooting pictures of the games and took the above picture. It was certainly not the last I'd see of that train.

I first rode the Pennsylvanian home for Fall Break of that year, and found Amtrak accomodations comfortable and nice. I enjoyed the smooth ride back home and looked forward to my next chance to take the train, rather than waste gas getting someone to drive for hours to pick me up and bring me home. But, I felt a little bad, becasue I knew I had little reason to ride the train...

But that didn't last long. Enter a wonderful sweetheart form western Pennsylvania, and I had my reason to hop on Train 43 for the occasional weekend visit! The schedule worked beautifully that I could leave my small college town and arrive in the Pittsburgh area in the early evening Friday, and go back in the afternoon Sunday. It worked so well, and I know I speak for both her and me in saying that the train made the start of our relationship much nicer.

Remember all those old movies with the sentimental goodbye scenes at the train stations? Well, let those people complain about the state of culture, passenger rail, and anything they want to. The truth is, that magic never left. I offer the above picture, shot by my dear's father, as proof.

So Amtrak brought me home and brought me to my sweetheart, but it also brought me closer to my community. On my travels, I learned that my town's train station was always losing reading material from the waiting room, as people just took it. So, I began to deliver my college newspaper to the station, and got to know the agent there. I took the picture below on a springtime delivery walk about a year ago. Like the emotional platform goodbyes, the old-fashioned magic of trains and switch towers lives on also.
In those ways, the Amtrak Pennsylvanian has made a mark on my life and made its stand for the classic ideas of yesterday. And with ever-more college students riding the train home, Amtrak stands for the future, too. I appreciate it a lot-- for only two trains a day, one in each direction, the Pennsylvanian is really good. I freely recommend it as a good way to make your next cross-Commonwealth journey.

And with all those memories and feelings tied to this train, I'm sure to enjoy having a working model of it, to be featured in some upcoming articles for Model Railroad News.


Thanks to everyone who works on or has worked on the Pennsylvanian. You're more important to people's lives than you may think.

-Steven Goehring
Model Railroad News Associate Editor