Vacation fun with trains

Since the early 90's my wife and I have been riding scenic railroads and visiting train museums on our vacations. Historically we would find an area that had a number of these and try to find a central location to stay and make day trips to the ones nearby we found in our research. Before the internet this was done with a guide book that was published annually and organized by state. It had coupons for some of the attractions in the middle of the book and you can probably guess that those were the ones we really tried to get to.

While making our way to these attractions we would keep our eyes open for signs and would do our best to not pass anything we saw that did not make the book. This led to some interesting finds in some really odd places, sometimes we really felt like we were lost and should turn back and there it was! One specific example of this I believe was in Delaware on our way back up from Virginia. There was a sign that said railroad museum and we took the turn. About 40 minutes later in the middle of some cornfield we found it.

We have traveled most of the east coast with stops in New Hampshire, Maine, Pennsylvania, Baltimore, Virginia, New Jersey and even convinced friends to ride with us on our visit to the Grand Canyon (as well as a secondary ride in AZ at Verde Canyon without them).