Welcome to Pennsylvania!

The drive south out of New York was a beautiful ride with hillsides filled with changing foliage. Denisa kept saying "oh" and "ah" as we were entertained by the rolling mountains of southern New York.

We've been in New York for several weeks, and we've noticed their road-side signs warning about the fines for texting while driving. The state also provides "text stops" along the highways.

We have passed the Pennsylvania welcome sign as we drove across the narrow section of the state along Lake Erie. But this is the first time we've actually spent a night in this new state. We set up camp at Shady Rest Campground, in the northeast corner of the state near South Gibson, Pennsylvania. We've stayed in a string of full-hook-up private campgrounds, even though we usually prefer state park campgrounds. That is because the recent states charge higher than usual camping rates, that include an extra premium for out-of-state campers.

We found that we are in the middle of a section of the country whose foundation was built on coal, steel, and the railroads. So we headed to Steamtown Museum in nearby Scranton, Pennsylvania. A national historic site, Steamtown showcases everything about the American steam locomotive. Out front is one of the longest steam locomotive engines in the world--appropriately named Big Boy.

There are dozens of steam locomotives on the grounds of the historic site, and visitors are able to climb aboard several of them. This one even comes with the traditional bell that can be rang by all the wanna-be engineers.

There are lots of controls inside the cab, but the steering wheel is strangely missing.

We enjoyed touring through the cars that were often pulled behind these old steam locomotives. This is a business car, built by the Pullman Company. It is best described as a very comfortable rolling hotel for rail travelers. Right behind Mark is a sitting room with couches and chairs for guests to socialize.

There was also a formal dining room (backed with a full kitchen) for meals on the rails.

With a view of one of the bedrooms, we got a snapshot of the first-class travel possibilities on a steam train in the 1930's.

These trains were also a big part of the postal service during this era. They would snag the white canvas bags of outgoing mail that local post offices would leave on poles beside the tracks. That mail was sorted and bagged by postal clerks while the train was moving; and those same bags were thrown from the train for delivery to the post offices along the tracks.

We took an hour-long tour of the machine shop at the museum. There wasn't much work going on this afternoon, but they have all the machinery necessary to do big jobs like changing out tires on these old steam trains.

The machine shop is working on several projects, including this old steam engine that was named, "Constitution" in its heyday in the 1930's.

Steamtown also offers train rides, in passenger cars pulled by steam locomotive #26. This engine was brought back to life in the machine shop that we had just toured. They completed the work, bringing #26 back to its original grandeur with a fresh sparkling coat of black paint. That's when a historian noticed the original engine was actually painted a dark olive green. To keep with its historical correctness, it went back to the shop for a new paint job.

Mark took this picture while he was standing on the tracks, with the engine in gear and puffing smoke. This could be disastrous, except that the gear it was in was actually reverse. The train was backing into the round-house to drop off a passenger car.

The passenger car was disconnected, and we watched as they gave it a spin on the round table in the center of the train museum grounds.

Trains were needed in this area to transport coal, as well as the steel produced here. The Scranton iron furnace, built in the 1800's, is still standing in a public park close to Steamtown.

The columns that were once used to cook a batch of steel, now just cook up an interesting picture with Mark at the top looking down.

Looking at all that steel and old railroads can make a couple of travelers hungry. So we found an equally old diner for lunch. We shared the special on the menu--a cheeseburger, hotdog, bacon, and chili burger on one loaded bun, with a side of french fries with gravy. It was a gourmet healthy food lunch today.

Those steam locomotives needed new tracks across this hilly country-side. So elevated viaducts were built in areas to connect the hills, and bridge over the water. It was fun to drive the country roads to find the famous Tunkhannock railroad viaduct. At close to a half-mile in length, it would have been hard to miss it.

We were already familiar with this bridge since our campground host had recommended we see it. There was also a model of this famous bridge at the Steamtown museum.  

The Tunkhannock Viaduct is famous because even though it was built in 1913, it was way ahead of its time from an engineering standpoint. It is made completely of concrete, which was a relatively new building material at the time. Today it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.

The sun was setting as we found our next railroad bridge--Martin's Creek Viaduct. This would have been a show-stopper view if we hadn't just seen the largest concrete bridge in the world a few miles before.

It was dark by the time we pulled into our campground. We'll only be here three nights, so we have two full days of touring all that northeast Pennsylvania has to show us.