(upbeat music) - The Colebrookdale Railroad is one of the oldest railroads in the United States.

Our railroad was started specifically to haul iron.

In 2009, the line was petitioned for abandonment, and that's when I got involved.

I was a student in law school at the time, and I read that the railroad in my hometown, this beautiful and scenic little railroad, was about to be abandoned, and I was determined to do something about it.

When I was a little boy, I grew up here in this area, and after church on Sundays, my grandfather would take me down to the train station and we'd watch the trains go by.

And one day, we heard the whistle or the horn, and my grandfather said, "That's the train switching on the Colebrookdale line.

And that's a beautiful and scenic little line, and nobody knows about it."

I remember him saying that.

And 30 years later, when I read that the line was about to be abandoned, that memory was triggered.

And I thought, you know, my hometown needs something like the Colebrookdale again.

(somber music) The Colebrookdale Railroad is known as the Secret Valley line because we pass through a beautiful valley formed by two creeks.

The name Secret Valley indicates that it's something to discover.

(somber music) The Secret Valley is the location of the oldest iron making sites in the new world.

Thomas Rudder, and a friend of William Penn, established an iron works at Colebrookdales right here along what would become the Colebrookdale's tracks.

(whimsical music) The Colebrookdale exists and is coming back to life within this wonderful context of railroad history.

But that presented a unique opportunity to be able to portray an era that is almost entirely lost in time.

The era of the Pullman Palace car.

These cars were intended to be mansions on rails that would give the traveling public an opportunity to experience a level of beauty that they otherwise would not have in their lives.

(upbeat music) - And I saw the railroad and I thought, wow, it'd be really something if they could turn this into a tourist railroad, and that would really draw people in.

There was a steam locomotive for sale, and they've just cut the price in had.

Boy, it'd be great if you had a steam locomotive.

So I thought that would really do it.

Finally, we said, okay, and we bought it, and now it still has to be completely reassembled.

It's quite a project.

The point of it is to bring business to Boyertown.

In fact, Boyertown will gain more than the railroad will financially, but that's the reason for it.

(upbeat music) - I've been working at the Colebrookdale and consulting with them for, since the inception of this railroad.

I really enjoy railroading.

It gets in your blood.

It's something that you have to work at to understand the real fun that it can be, as well as the vocation and how demanding it is.

I'm an engineer.

There's a lot of demands to running a piece of equipment and to making it a good trip.

You always run the train for the passengers.

(bell tolling) (train horn blares) When you get in a locomotive, you have to respect the great amount of power that you have, and you have to know how to modulate that power.

(relaxing piano music) And you have to have the experience to make all that weight move smoothly and efficiently out of the station.

(relaxing piano music) I've been an engineer for four decades, so I have a great deal of railroading background that kind of contributes to the fervor that I have for railroading, which really should be considered kind of a sickness because people who get into railroading, they kind of never remove themselves from it.

(relaxing piano music) Railroads themselves built this country.

Without railroads, we'd have never been the industrial power or been able to fight the wars we had to fight, or keep the economy at the top of the world.

Without them railroads, this country would've been a second class nation.

(calming piano music)