In Amish Country, on the Train to Paradise
The double hoot of a steam train jolted me awake. I peeked out the window above my bed. A wispy gray tuft billowed behind a massive coal-burning locomotive as it chuffed across fields of Amish farmland toward Paradise, Pa.
People come to these pleasant hills of Lancaster County for its countryside shops selling fruit and shoofly pie and its quiet, winding roads with the only sound the click-clacking of horse-drawn buggies. But we came for the rumbling, the soot and the clanging. We came for the trains.
The weekend trip was only half over, and already we had waved at them, climbed up them, rode on them and eaten inside of them. And yes -- I recalled that morning as I looked around the narrow room with small crisply curtained windows where I woke up -- I was actually sleeping in a caboose.
