Bellefonte Historical Railroad Society preparing for annual Christmas-themed rides. Take a look

Every year around Christmastime, the Bellefonte Historical Railroad Society (BHRS) hosts festive train rides to celebrate the Christmas season, with visitors and organizers alike looking forward to the tradition.

This year, the society will host two Christmas-themed rides. One is a round trip to Milesburg — known as the Sugar Plum Limited ride — during Saturday’s Bellefonte Victorian Christmas event that will showcase holiday lights and a well-decorated house nicknamed “The North Pole.” The other is a traditional Candy Cane Express ride on Dec. 15, 21 and 22 that will take passengers on a train ride featuring visitors like Santa Claus and his many helpers.

The Sugar Plum Limited ride will last for 30 minutes, and the Candy Cane Express ride will last for an hour. Both rides will depart from the Bellefonte Train Station at Talleyrand Park, and all rides are already sold out. (Tickets for the Sugar Plum Limited ride were $15 per person, while tickets for the Candy Cane Express were $23 for adults and $17 for children.)

Decorating the train cars

The train cars that will be hauling the passengers are the society’s sister cars, the Budd RDC-1 #9167 and the recently-restored Budd RDC-1 #9153, along with three other passenger cars, provided by the North Shore Railroad Company.

While the cars in question are now decked out in holiday gear, according to BHRS Director Dan Durachko, they don’t just magically decorate themselves. They have to undergo some seasonal maintenance and checkups before they can be decorated for, and operated during, the holiday season.

“Unfortunately, we can’t just leave (the cars) decorated in their Christmas garb year-round, although it’d be a heck of a lot easier if we could,” Durachko said. “Every year around this time we take them through a maintenance process to ensure that they are not only running properly, but that they are safe for anyone who’s going to be boarding them in the coming days and weeks too.”

Once the maintenance is finished, the decorating of the cars can begin — which is a process that, according to Durachko, only takes a five- to six-hour work session to complete.

The train is “double-decorated,” meaning that two different sets of lights are set up on the train, each for a specific ride.

For the Sugar Plum Limited ride, the lights adorning the cars will be blue and white with some purple. For the Candy Cane Express ride, the other lights will be turned off, with red, green and white lights turned on.

Despite the decorating process usually being easy for the society to complete, that doesn’t mean there still aren’t some hurdles along the way.

“Almost every year we have a few little things pop up here and there that makes the decorating process a bit of headache,” Durachko said. “It’s never anything irreparable though; just small little annoyances. Like a light strip will blow out when we already hung it up, or one of the other decorations will break and we have to fix it. But, hey, that’s a pretty small price to pay to be able to provide these kind of experiences.”

Durachko estimates that this year’s holiday train rides will carry a total of around 5,000 passengers, with tickets selling out for the rides last week.

Looking ahead

These Christmas rides aren’t the only thing that the BHRS has been up to this year. At the Centre County Commissioners meeting on Nov. 19, Durachko approached the commissioners with a resolution, requesting that the county apply for a $650,000 Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development grant on behalf of the BHRS.

If this grant is awarded, the society plans on using the funding on four different things: The continued restoration of train cars and potential purchase of future machinery, the maintenance of a mile-long segment of track owned by the BHRS in Lemont, the potential construction of a shelter for the society’s two rail cars and most importantly, the training of BHRS members so that they are able to operate their own train cars.

According to Durachko, the organization hires operators from North Shore and the Nittany & Bald Eagle Railroad to operate their trains, which is a “major overhead expense” for the society.

The training of their own members would lift that financial burden on the society, while also lessening the other two railroad companies’ burdens of having to provide the BHRS with operators.

“It’d save us a ton of money and them a ton of time while still maintaining that same awesome relationship,” added Durachko, who reiterated how he “greatly” appreciative he was of the railroad companies. “It’d be a win/win situation as far as I’m concerned.”

The society also had its eyes set on more new events in 2025, with Durachko saying that he’d like to see the society host an event “at least every other month,” although many of the future plans are still in their early stages.

Aside from the train rides, there are other holiday events taking place across Bellefonte this weekend as well, including the Bellefonte Winter Market, which will take place in Talleyrand Park from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, and the Bellefonte Victorian Christmas celebration — an occasion offering a number of events for all ages throughout the weekend, Friday through Sunday.

A full list of Victorian Christmas events and their details is available on the celebration’s website.

More information on the BHRS, its history and all of its rides — holiday-themed or not — can be found on the society’s website and Facebook page.