Travel for us is a kind of jigsaw puzzle now, where we are filling in bits of pieces of the bigger picture of the United States that we’ve been creating during the twenty-five years of our marriage and our travels together. Altoona is one of those pieces. Despite Roger attending university about a hundred miles away, and Carol living for a year in Johnstown just a few miles away, neither of us had been there. So we decided to make it a destination and take in the Railroaders Memorial Museum, which is a celebration of Altoona’s role in developing the railroad industry in that area in the early 1800’s and what that meant for the city. At that time the railroad WAS Altoona. The Pennsylvania Railroad brought workers from all over the country and together they built the town up to a population at one time of 38,000. Exhibits showed how the engineer, the conductor, the brakeman, the coal stoker and signalman all had to work together as a team to make it all work; some of those jobs were very dangerous. Severed fingers were a common injury for the men in charge of linking the cars together, and the coal man often shoveled up to 2 tons of coal per trip from, for example, Pittsburgh to Harrisburg. Tough work but they were glad to have it.

We were greeted in the front lobby of the museum by the Spirit of Altoona, which is currently being restored in the roundhouse of the museum. It is an iconic seam locomotive: the K4s Class engine is a masterwork of technology born of Altoona, Pennsylvania’s engineering and innovation. These mammoth engines propelled a growing nation through two world wars, the Great Depression, and a booming postwar America. Today, only two of these locomotives survive.

Another exhibit showed the inside the engineer’s “cockpit.” It appeared to me like taking multi-tasking to the extreme. Note in the picture below the seat in the bottom right corner. He had to stay out of the way of the coal stoker who who shoveling coal into the door in the middle. And his job was very important because any lowering of the temperature could cause the boiler to explode.

For more details on this remarkable museum, check out https://www.railroadcity.org.

The next piece of our jigsaw puzzle fell into place when the town of Punxsatawney, PA appeared on the road before us. Our stop there wasn’t intentional, but it seemed a good spot for lunch, and we learned some interesting things from the locals while we were there. First, Groundhog Day was NOT filmed in Punxsatawney, which I consider a mistake because it is a very photogenic town and proud of it’s heritage as the Weather Capital of the World. It is in beautiful shape for the large influx of people who come to celebrate Groundhog Day on February 2, when Punxsatawney Phil either sees or doesn’t see his shadow to predict whether there will be six more weeks of winter.

Second, there is a real Punxatawney Phil, who lives in a large glass cage in the town library and is open for visitors. (I had always thought they just found the nearest groundhog available and gave him one day of fame. Not so.) Phil lives there with his companion/wife/significant other named Phyllis, and while we didn’t go to visit them (next time!), I was told they were quite a happy couple.

That said, it really isn’t all that necessary to visit Phil, as there is are many Phils all over town on many of the corners of town and in the parks. Here are a few….