(The following article by Roger Petterson was posted on the Chicago Sun Times website on February 8.)
CHICAGO — Park the car, leave your hiking boots behind and admire scenery the old-fashioned way — from one of the many tourist trains and scenic railroads operating around this country and elsewhere.
A few of them use old steam engines, many operate diesel locomotives, and most of them have Web sites to tell you where they are, when they run and what scenery you can see. But call ahead; schedules change, and the presence of a Web site doesn’t always mean a business is still operating.
There are trains in the East, such as West Virginia’s Cass Scenic Railroad State Park (www.cassrailroad.com) where steam engines follow a steep, switch-backed old logging route in the central Appalachians to an elevation of 4,842 feet at Bald Knob. The next season for this route, 160 miles southwest of Washington, opens in May. The state Department of Transportation (www.wvdot.com/4–railways /4b4–touristrail.htm) has links to others.
In New England, Trains New Hampshire (www.trainsnh.com) provides links to five tourist railroads covering more than 150 miles of track. They include the Mount Washington Cog Railway (www.thecog.com) which claws its way up the highest peak in the Northeast.
There are trains in the West, such as the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge (www.durangosilvertonrailroad.com) through the rugged mountain scenery of the San Juan National Forest in southwestern Colorado.
Or try Arizona’s Grand Canyon Railway (www.thetrain.com), which lets you ditch your car in Williams, right on Interstate 40, and take the easy, scenic route to the Canyon’s South Rim, where everyone else is looking for a parking place. Elsewhere in the state, the Verde Canyon Railroad (www.verdecanyon rr.com) offers a view of countryside you can’t get to without hiking. Check out Verde Canyon’s slide show.
Head north to Minnesota and try the North Shore Scenic Railroad (www.lsrm.org/index–3.htm) along part of Lake Superior.
In the other direction, the Austin Steam Train Association (www.austinsteamtrain .org) offers the Texas Hill Country.
Luckily, there are rail fans who already have done the heavy lifting and put together directories with Web links.
A Web site called Railroad.Net (www.railroad.net/Default.asp) provides forums and articles for true rail fans. Railroad Data (www.railroaddata.com) has links under ”Tourist RRs and Museums” to tourist trains in the United States, Canada and elsewhere around the world. Try the United Kingdom for the Bala Lake Railway in Wales, or International for Australia’s Pichi Richi Railway. And Rails USA (www.railsusa.com/tourist .shtml) has a directory organized by state that includes California’s Napa Valley Wine Train and Michigan’s Grand Traverse Dinner Train.