Passengers on the Scranton Limited train ride at Steamtown National Historic Site

Steamtown National Historic Site offers short train rides—roughly 45 minutes long—on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays starting in May and continuing through October. The train rides typically depart at 10:30 AM, 11:30 AM, 1:15 PM, and 2:30 PM, but before heading to the park, be sure to get the current schedule on the National Park Service’s official Train Rides web page. There are also train rides with Santa Claus in December.

The park currently only has one operating steam engine, the Baldwin No. 26, but it does not run every weekend. If taking a train pulled by a historic steam locomotive is important to you, be sure to call the park at (570) 445-1898 ahead of time to see if No. 26 will be operating. Otherwise, the trains are pulled by one of the park’s diesel-electric engines. Regardless, you still get to ride in a steam-era passenger coach. A second steam engine is now being restored, the Boston and Maine No. 3713, but work won’t be completed for a few more years…maybe. The restoration actually started in 1995, and work is supposedly “50 percent complete” according to a Steamtown spokesperson.

Baldwin No. 26 locomotive at Steamtown National Historic Site

There is a fee to ride the train, and tickets are only sold at the park ticket office on the day of the event—no advance reservations are accepted. Payment is credit / debit card only. The tickets are good for the entire day, so you can choose any departure time or even ride the train all four times (the route is the same). There are plenty of seats, so don’t worry about not getting a ticket or a seat for a particular departure.

Train ticket office at Steamtown National Historic Site

The main train ride at Steamtown is the Scranton Limited. One version of the ride takes about 45 minutes, but with boarding and getting a seat, allow an hour. The trip heads southeast through downtown Scranton, passes the University of Scranton, and ends at a bridge over Roaring Brook and with a view of Nay Aug Gorge. At that point the engine reverses direction and returns to the railyard. Total distance is roughly four miles, round trip. There is a shorter version that ends at the University of Scranton before heading back.

The Scranton Limited short train ride at Steamtown National Historic Site passes through downtown Scranton, Pennsylvania

The end of the route on the Scranton Limited short train ride at Steamtown National Historic Site is at Roaring Brook and the Nay Aug Gorge

There is a second ride, the Caboose Experience, that takes about 20 minutes and just circles the park boundaries. The draw here is that you get to ride in the caboose. This ride is only held on Saturdays and Sundays, and only if enough staff or volunteers show up to make it happen, so think of it more as a bonus than something you come to the park for (it wasn’t held when I visited). The ride is included with your Scranton Limited ticket, and as with that ticket, you can take whichever Caboose Experience departure you like.

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