David hosts the show from the famed Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, which boasts one of the largest indoor collections of railroad equipment in the United States. Our travels begin From the North Creek Depot of the Upper Hudson River Railroad in New York. Here, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt learned he was to become President after the death of President William McKinley. This line was built as transportation to what was hoped to become the Central Park of the World in the Adirondack Mountains, establishing the first railroad built solely to create a tourist industry. The glories of the East continue to be featured from aboard the Green Mountain Flyer through the Vermont countryside. It travels along the banks of the Connecticut River. This line is still a major freight hauler and passengers regularly see freight trains pass by the historic Bellows Falls station as they await the daily Amtrak train.
Across the street from the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania is the Historic Strasburg Rail Road. The Strasburg remains much the same as it was back when it was created in 1832. Its steam engines and refurbished coaches take passengers through Pennsylvania's beautiful Amish countryside on the oldest continuing short-line railroad in North America. We venture next to the Allegheny Mountains of Maryland, home to the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad. Here riders can become a part of moving history as they are transported by the largest Baldwin 2-8-0-type steam engine in existence as it ascends 1,300 feet to Frostburg. Along the way you travel through the 914-foot long Brush Tunnel and by Bone Cave, where remains of prehistoric saber tooth cats and mastodons were unearthed during the building of the line. The logging and coal industry developed most of the railroads in West Virginia.
Just 15 miles south of Cleveland, Ohio, in the town of Peninsula lies the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad. Nestled along the banks of the Cuyahoga River in the beautiful Cuyahoga Valley National Park, the railroad offers passengers 26 miles of rivers, forests and wildlife. For thousands of years Indians used the Cuyahoga River and Valley as a north-south transportation corridor. Later the Ohio & Erie Canal provided the early settlers a slow, but easy way to move bulk goods and people. This railroad offers a one-way ticket for those riders who choose to bike back along the original towpath. The grandeur and elegance of dining on the rails can be experienced on the Grand Traverse train in northwestern Lower Michigan. The train features a five-course gourmet meal prepared and cooked entirely on the train. Passengers are transported on restored Pullman articulated dining cars that were built in 1940.
We begin this segment in Texas, the largest state in the Union. We visit the railway at Rusk, Texas, built in 1881 by prisoners to ship in raw material from the areas rich iron ore deposits and ship out finished goods made in the local state prison. The Texas State Railroad Museum is not your typical museum. Instead of stationary pieces of railway equipment and displays inside a building, it's a moving museum along 25 miles of track between Rusk and Palestine. Thanks to the museum's large collection of vintage steam engines, passengers get a vivid sense if what steam travel was like as they ride through the heavily timber forests of southeastern Texas. Transporting raw material was a familiar duty for Western railroads, and the town of Silverton, Colorado, was booming with the mining of precious metals in the 1870s. The Denver & Rio Grande Railroad decided to build a narrow-gauge line in 1879 from Antonito to Silverton to meet this need.
Our first stop in this segment of great scenic railway journeys takes us to Northern California and the Shasta Sunset Dinner train. Here we'll take a journey in grand dining style through the pristine mountain beauty of this region of the country. This line serves up a gourmet meal as it transports its passengers around the base of the 14,000-foot Mt Shasta. We will also climb on board the railroad's day time excursion train, which is pulled by a 1918 Baldwin Steam engine.In 1805 the Lewis and Clark expedition discovered the riches of the Hood River region in Oregon, better known today as the Columbia Gorge. The Mount Hood Railroad reveals the beauty of this area as it travels 22 miles from Hood River to the base of the 11,235-foot Mount Hood in Parkdale. Because of the steep grades for the train to climb the 1700 feet to Parkdale it must use a switchback to get there. This railway is one of only four in the country that still uses switchbacks.