RAILFAN
Trackside videos from a lifelong admirer of the rails, chasing steam, diesel, and history through southeastern Pennsylvania and beyond.
Visit the ChannelThe Channel
Rail and train videos filmed from trackside by an admirer and enthusiast of railroading.
Heritage Steam
The heart of the channel: the New Hope & Ivyland and the Strasburg Rail Road, two of Pennsylvania's great living railroads, filmed in every season.
Trackside Railfanning
Grade crossings, depots, and mainline meets, capturing the sights and sounds of whatever rolls through, from excursion steam to modern freight.
Not Exclusively
The two home roads get the spotlight, but the camera travels to Amtrak, regional shortlines, and anything else with flanged wheels and a horn.
The Home Roads
A short history of the two railroads featured most on the channel.
New Hope & Ivyland Railroad
Built in 1891 as the Reading Company's New Hope Branch, the line once ran ten trains a day to Philadelphia, hauling passengers, milk, gravel, and brick out of Bucks County. When passenger service faded in the 1950s, a group of enthusiasts stepped in, buying the 16.7-mile line from the Reading in 1966 and reviving it as the New Hope & Ivyland. Sixty years on, its steam and vintage diesel trains still wind from the canal town of New Hope through the Bucks County hills.
Strasburg Rail Road
Chartered in June 1832 to connect the town of Strasburg to Pennsylvania's new Philadelphia & Columbia line, the Strasburg Rail Road is the oldest continuously operating railroad in the western hemisphere. Nearly abandoned in the 1950s, it was rescued by railfans in 1958 and ran its first tourist excursion in January 1959, making it one of America's first preserved steam railroads. Today its locomotives haul hundreds of thousands of riders a year through Lancaster County's Amish farmland, four miles to Paradise and back.