In October of 2024, we decided to experience a quaint little rail road trip from Reading, in Berks County, PA, north and east about 50 miles to Jim Thorpe. The excursion is billed as a “Fall Foliage” event, and we were anxious to see the colorful leaves as they turned deep colors of red, orange and yellow. We drove up to Reading on Sunday morning, finding the weather bright, clear and warm. The train loaded up and chugged out of the station, at a stately pace of about 22 miles an hour. I don’t want to do a whole Yelp review of the trip, but I do have to say that we don’t believe the $198 per person round trip cost was quite justified. For one thing, the windows of the ‘Vista View’ observation car that we paid extra to ride did not appear to have been washed clean for several weeks. One does not wish to have to focus around dried pigeon poo while taking photos. The seats were ok, nothing special, but the coolers full of water and 7-Up in the back left something to be desired, as did the bags of three-week old Famous Amos.
We travelled north, up past Port Clinton (where we stopped to pick up some more stragglers…) and New Ringgold. The scenery was vibrant, more or less, but even at the glacial pace of the iron horse, trying to get and keep focus on close-by vegetation was troublesome as it sped leisurely past the crud-encrusted windows. Luckily, landscape farther away held still for me. After an hour or so, we slid past Tamaqua and it’s rail service area. It was interesting passing through a dozen or so small towns at grade level, seeing the railroad crossing arms down and Sunday morning citizens patiently waiting for the diesel to pass by so they could continue their journey to the IHOP or where-ever.
At one point, the train made a hard right turn, and we passed by a large lake that had originally been constructed for farmland irrigation. Once the farms went away in the early 1950s, it was decided to turn the oasis into semi-exclusive residential housing. Lake Hauto seemed nice enough. We were only about 20 minutes from our destination.
Around 11 am, we pulled into the Jim Thorpe Station, greeted by a throng of humanity I didn’t expect. Turns out this was the third weekend in a row that the city fathers had designated “2024 Fall Foliage Celebration Weekend”, and it seemed that most of the population of North Jersey, New York City, Mumbai and Guadalajara had taken up residence. It was interesting seeing so many foreign tourists in this normally sleepy little burg, and I suppose there are worse places to show off America. They all seemed to be having a good time, and I’m sure the throngs of humanity made most of them feel right at home. We walked up and down the main street, saw a cute golden retriever dog, visited a few of the shops, and then headed for the town square where we were treated to a really bad local musical ensemble, stood in line for forty minutes to get a sausage dog, chips and a soda for $12.50, and then sat on a bench. After a while, the music drove us to seek a quieter locale, and we shouldered our way over to the train station, resigned to waiting the two and a half hours for our return trip. It was fun just people watching, and we offered accomodation on our bench to various exhausted travelers, including one nice old Indian man who’s family dropped him off while they wandered around, and I did get a cute picture of the shy little granddaughter.
The return trip was uneventful, more or less, since it got dark about an hour into the journey.