(train horn hooting) (train rumbling) (steam engine chugging) (gentle music) - We're a 400-mile small railroad.

We serve nine counties in Eastern Pennsylvania.

Our main line runs from Redding to Scranton.

We service all the little communities in between that.

We move everything from olives, sand, plastics to paper.

We haul mostly freight of everything that you use in your daily lives.

Our most important commodity is anthracite coal.

This year, we'll probably move about 1,400,000 tons of anthracite.

I started off as a school teacher at Fleetwood, Pennsylvania, and I taught for four years.

But when I was a little young lad my mom bought me coin books and I started collecting coins, and I started making more money buying and selling rare coins than I did teaching school.

So I left teaching school when I was about 25 years old, and I went into the the rare coin business.

Well, in 1981, I was very successful and I retired when I was 33 years old.

And I was just hanging out, I wasn't doing too much, and one night I was in a bar room having a drink and a man yells, a guy I don't even know, yelled across the bar, said "Mr. Muller," he says.

"They're tearing the railroad out in Hamburg.

You should buy that."

And I'm thinking, wow, I'm looking for something to do, and I love trains, I've always played with trains.

I went home that night, I got my wife, told her.

The next morning we got up and we walked a couple of miles on the old Pennsylvania Railroad in Hamburg.

And after that I made an offer to Penn Central and, basically, bought my first 13 miles in 1983.

I realized that the highlight for the general public is our passenger equipment, where you can take a ride in some of the cars.

We have a very nice Parlor Car where 13 luxury seats in it, and you can sit there and we serve snacks in it.

We re-did that to look like it did in the 1890s to 1910, and it's absolutely beautiful.

We have club cars, which have bars in 'em, and they have 22 seats each.

I bought the locomotive, the 2102, in 1987.

A club in Reading brought this engine in and they wanted to run it all over the Conrail system, and it didn't work out too well for 'em, and they didn't have the money to send it back to Ohio.

And so I thought, this is my chance to get this.

So I made an offer they couldn't refuse.

And then it ran outta what they call tube time, and without a complete multimillion dollar rebuild, it couldn't run anymore.

The federal government has a mandate that every 15 years you have to completely rebuild a steam engine.

And what that involves is you to open up the front of the engine and you pull all the tubes out and all the flues.

You also have the firebox to rebuild, all the accessories.

Everything has to rebuild.

In 2016, I realized I had the time to do this, so I put a full-time crew on it from 2016 till 2023, and we completely rebuilt it.

(equipment hammering) (sparks sizzling) (dramatic music) (tool hammering) (sparks sizzling) (equipment hammering) (dramatic music) (tool whirring) (hammer thwacking) And we completely rebuilt it, it's brand new.

And we run it now on our, what we call the Reading Northern Rambles, and we run it all over our system now, every summer.

(steam hissing) (steam engine horn tooting) (steam engine chugging) (steam engine horn tooting) 2102, which is at back, rebuilt 1945.

It's immense.

It holds 26 tons of coal, 19,000 gallons of water.

Plus, we pull an auxiliary tender that holds another 8,000.

And it weighs over a million pounds when fully loaded with coal and water.

(steam engine chugging) The reason I bought the railroad was to play with trains.

I wanted to buy a steam engine, get some passenger cars, and play with trains.

(steam engine horn tooting) (bright dramatic music)