A Legacy By Rail
- Apr 11
- 6 min read
by Michael Long
[Originally published in the Spring 2026 issue of Mount Gretna Magazine. View the full issue to see this story in its designed layout, complete with additional images.]
More than half a century removed from the days when locomotives regularly chuffed along Pennsylvania rivers and rails, steam engines continue to capture our imaginations.
Steam trains at Lancaster County’s Strasburg Rail Road, for example, transport hundreds of thousands of visitors back in time each year. A real-life version of one of America’s most beloved childhood influencers, Thomas the Tank Engine, regularly draws massive crowds to the Strasburg rail yard. Even Hersheypark, with its arsenal of cutting-edge, brain-rattling roller coasters, still runs the staid, steady Dry Gulch Railroad and has continuously operated a miniature railroad for more than 115 years.
What endears us so to the steam engine? Is it the billowing plumes of smoke and water vapor that trail behind it like a scarf in the wind or the high-pitched whistle of steam fleeing its boiler? Do we connect with the clickety-clack of cast iron carriage wheels passing over rail joints or the simple mechanical miracle of converting an oak log or lump of coal into an indomitable horizontal force?
During the late 19th century, when steam-powered mechanical monoliths blazed new trails across the American transportation landscape, trains were as functional as they were fascinating. Moving groups of people or tons of supplies across land meant investing in either real horses or iron horses. For Cornwall iron magnate Robert H. Coleman, an incurable train enthusiast saddled with his family’s $30 million fortune — worth a billion dollars in today’s money — the choice was easy.
Building a community by rail
In 1883, Coleman built the Cornwall & Lebanon (C&L) Railroad, connecting Lebanon to the Pennsylvania Railroad main line near Elizabethtown. He established Mount Gretna alongside the route as a tranquil woodland park and fairground. Coleman invested as much love and money in Gretna as he did in his trains. By 1889, he decided Mount Gretna deserved its own recreational rail line, the Mount Gretna Narrow Gauge Railroad.
“When you’re one of the richest men in America, and you like toy trains, you’re not limited to the dining room table,” says Vince Montano, a local historian and member of the Mount Gretna Area Historical Society. In late April 2025, before Gretna’s dense foliage had fully emerged, Vince took a band of historically sensitive locals — your author included — hiking along the route of Coleman’s long extinct pet project.
The Narrow Gauge Railroad is so named because the distance between its two rails — its gauge — was only 2 feet, less than half the width of a standard gauge railroad. For perspective, Hersheypark’s Dry Gulch Railroad has the same 2-foot gauge, but its train looks like a toy compared to the Gretna line’s three massive engines. Although they were scaled-down versions of full-size engines, they weighed 14 to 17 tons each and stood as tall as a modern tractor-trailer from rail to smokestack. For more than a quarter century, those engines chugged around Mount Gretna in the summer heat, shuttling soldiers, Sunday school classes, and families on holiday.
By the time the Narrow Gauge Railroad officially launched on July 4, 1889, Gretna had cultivated sufficient infrastructure and interest to keep the trains running. Coleman was in his mid-20s when he cleared the first 5 acres of land for Mount Gretna Park. Like many young, wealthy entrepreneurs of the Gilded Age, he moved fast. The late Mount Gretna historian Jack Bitner combed through newspaper accounts of those early years, which he captures in his 1990 book Mt. Gretna: A Coleman Legacy. In the book, he chronicles the rapid expansion of the Gretna park and the surrounding area. By the summer of 1885, he writes, “train service to Mt. Gretna was both frequent and inexpensive, and new facilities appeared almost daily. In addition to kitchens, pavilions, (and) a dance floor, there were now a bowling alley, a shooting gallery, and numerous refreshment stands,” including one that served ice cream.
That same year, the Pennsylvania National Guard built a rifle range and established an encampment west of the park that would bring thousands of men to Gretna every summer for the next 50 years. In June 1885, Coleman ordered the Conewago Creek to be dammed, forming the 17-acre Lake Conewago, also west of the park. In 1886, boats and a bathhouse followed, and the first carousel arrived at the park. Other park additions included a baseball field with a grandstand that seated 500.
The Narrow Gauge Railroad connected it all. With an engine house, a turntable to reposition engines, and a water tank to keep them running, the rail line headed south from the C&L station past the park, then west past the military parade grounds, hugging the northern and western shores of the lake and shooting south across what is now Route 117.
At this point, a little over a mile into the route, a spur split off to the west toward the rifle range while the main pleasure route continued to climb steadily up around what today is the Gretna Chautauqua, crossing Pinch Road and snaking its way up to the Governor Dick overlook, which at the time consisted of only a wooden platform supported by some chestnut trees. The trip was four miles end to end and cost 25 cents — about $9 today — or 10 cents from the park to the rifle range. Approximately 34,000 people handed over their Seated Liberty quarters and dimes for a ride on Coleman’s boutique rail line that first summer, with many riding more than once for the fun of it.
The rise and fall of Gretna’s Narrow Gauge Railroad
To understand the broad general appeal of the Narrow Gauge Railroad, consider that, in 1889, locomotion was still largely foot- and hoof-driven. Safe bicycles were beginning to come into production, and central Pennsylvania wouldn’t see its first automobiles for another decade. In fact, newspaper records show Milton Hershey brought the first automobile to Lancaster in 1900, and Palmyra resident J. Daniel Snyder was the first person in his town to order an automobile in 1901.
The train wouldn’t have traveled overly fast. Narrow gauge trains like Gretna’s typically ran in the 10-20 mph range, faster than a trotting horse, but slower than a horse at full gallop. Thrill seekers looking for wind in their hair — the passenger cars were open-sided — might have been a little disappointed. But in an age of rapid industrialization, trains at any speed represented cutting-edge technological advancement.
Novelty draws crowds, and during those first summers, Gretna buzzed with energy. Church, military, and civic groups, by the tens of thousands, populated the park, which added a switchback railway, a predecessor to the roller coaster. In 1890, the park hosted its first Farmers Encampment, a forerunner of the Pennsylvania Farm Show, which included the construction of an exhibition hall that is still standing as the Mount Gretna Roller Rink.
A pedestrian bridge was built at the park to conduct foot traffic over the Narrow Gauge Railroad line and west toward the lake and military parade grounds.
By the early 1890s, Gretna was on the upswing, even as the fortunes of the man who built it were tanking. The exuberance of businesspeople like Coleman led to the overbuilding of railroads in the 1880s, and the collapse of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad contributed to the financial Panic of 1893, which decimated Coleman and others who were heavily invested in railroads.
By 1894, Coleman, financially ruined, left Lebanon County for good. In a 20-page booklet detailing the legacy of the Mount Gretna Narrow Gauge Railroad, historian Jack Bitner writes, “When the financial panic of 1893 struck, (Coleman) was forced to sell most of his holdings to the Lackawanna Iron Co. of Scranton. … A less sympathetic management terminated the Mount Gretna Narrow Gauge Railroad run to Governor Dick that year when Mr. Coleman’s personal interest and funds no longer supported it.”
The Narrow Gauge Railroad continued making trips from the park to the rifle range for the next 20 years, shuttling guests and guardsmen about the grounds. A stop was added at the palatial Conewago Hotel, which rose above the western shore of the lake in 1909, but six years later, the rail line shut down for good after an overloaded passenger car tipped over at the rifle range.
Today, only the faintest traces of the rail line remain on the landscape, and those are best seen in the early spring after the snow recedes, and the trees and shrubs remain denuded of leaves. Regular visitors to the Mount Gretna spur of the Lebanon Valley Rail Trail know how to spot through the trees the concrete pylons that still support a water tank. With some bushwhacking, the industrious hiker can trace the circular pit that housed the engine turntable immediately north of the water tank.
Michael Long is the deputy editor of the Investigations and Enterprise team for LNP | LancasterOnline and WITF. He and his family hail from northern Lancaster County and still frequent Mount Gretna.
For further reading:
For those who really want to go digging, the Mount Gretna Area Historical Society might be the best place to unearth the Narrow Gauge Railroad story. Copies of the two publications mentioned in this article — The Mount Gretna Narrow Gauge Railroad (2009) and the 216-page book Mt. Gretna: A Coleman Legacy — can be found there. The historical society and museum itself contain a wealth of information about the rail line, including artifacts. To learn more, call 717-964-1105 or visit MtGretnaHistory.org.
