Basically, three or four times a year, a life size Thomas shows up to keep tourist attractions like this one in financial solvency. I mean, I was at the Strasburg Railroad in the pre-Thomas days and it was a dive. You could feel the sightseeing inertia, the sense of impotent desperation as another weekend clicked by with no guests and no money and the grand old steam engines rusting in the shed.

You no longer get that feeling. At least, not on the Thomas weekends.

Since Thomas is actually there, the other trains of Sodor are relegated to photo-op posters.

Perhaps the greatest part of tourist stops like this is the underlying battle between the old-style Coney Island play-at-your-own-risk atmosphere and the modern DisneyWorld everything-is-cushioned-and-stanchioned-for-your-protection lawsuit-safe outlook. Strasburg, even on a Thomas day, errs toward the former.

We were able to clamber up inside the top of that caboose for a short ride down the tracks. There is barely a guard rail, only one step to climb six feet up, and no one is there to watch you or catch you.

And yeah, I realize that a five minute jaunt in the cupola of a caboose isn't that dangerous, but note the complete lack of fencing around the tracks. If you want to decapitate yourself, there is nothing that will stop you. There's always a couple staff members around to run the train, but they can't watch everything... plus there's a ton of people milling about and you've got as many angles as you need to get a limb onto those rails. Suicide on!

It's actually pretty refreshing and helps maintain that Depression-era wariness.

Here's the Very Useful Engine His Bad Self, huge and grinning. There is no shortage of opportunity to see this guy travel the tracks, because his path is the very center of the festivities. Every twenty minutes he either departs or returns, and every child in view will stop and watch Thomas go by.

During the ten minutes when he is stopped for loading, the staff does their best to herd people through for pictures.

Thomas pulls a line of classic Strasburg Railroad cars, and this is the "Day Out" portion of your trip. They pipe in Thomas music as you carve your way through Amish Country. What they must think of this.

There's a security feature for you: a sign straight out of the Cheers bar decor.

My camera battery died so I had to switch to the phone camera. Here Clark meets the authoritarian major domo of the railyard, Sir Topham Hatt. If you watch the show, this is the guy who is always threatening to scrap one train or another. And even though any one of them could run Hatt over in a blink, they live in fear and darkness. Personally, I think they deserve it since they are constantly crashing into walls and oil drums and whatnot.

I wasn't sure Clark was old enough for this ride, a do-it-yourself trek in a wide oval. On his first pass, an older child pretty much pushed Clark through, but he caught on and was able to hand-crank at quite a clip.

If you're thinking about going, don't get scared of the ticket price... it may sound like you're paying for just a single train ride through some fields, but you get all of the other smaller rides in the bargain. It definitely turns into a very fulfilling day for Thomas fans.

Of course, it's the souvenirs and photography that gets you.