Inside the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, you find a 185-year-old steam locomotive, an art deco GG1-class electric train and a diesel train painted bright Conrail blue.
Outside the museum grow tomatoes, peppers and beans.
Museum educator Jesse Shetrom understands the garden might seem out of place.
“What do plants have to do with railroads?” he says. “Trust us.”
The Strasburg museum tells the story of railroading in Pennsylvania. Now the story includes living history with the victory garden’s heirloom crops. Before refrigerated rail cars quickly moved food around the country, local produce like this was essential to communities. The chilled cars helped change what we grew and what we still eat, decades later. The garden’s a new way for visitors to interact with railroading history.
“You’ve seen the hall, it’s giant pieces of railroading technology,” Shetrom says. “We’re hoping to kind of make it a little bit more, I guess, personal.”
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Jesse Shetrom, museum educator at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, looks for pollinators on the dill in the museum’s victory garden at 300 Gap Road, Strasburg Township, on Friday, Aug. 15, 2025.
BLAINE SHAHAN | Staff Photographer
Education and interaction
The museum garden grew from new state K-12 science standards that start this school year. The standards cover science, technology and engineering, environmental literacy and sustainability (STEELS).
Shetrom and museum educator Juliette O’Connor brainstormed how to add environmental literacy and sustainability to their train-focused programming.
They also wanted a different kind of programming.
“We wanted to have something a little more interactive. Both of us really like gardening in our personal time,” Shetrom says. “So we thought, ‘How can we make this kind of fun, get something a little different, that has a bit more of a direct tie to railroading.’”
Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania educators Juliette O’Connor and Jesse Shetrom built a victory garden in front of the Strasburg site.
Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania
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Building a garden
They picked a grass-covered spot in a corner of the museum for the garden. The space is hard to miss in the long walk from the parking lot to the main entrance. The area has water nearby and a door to the museum, making it easy for Shetrom to step away and care for the plants in between programs. (O’Connor has since left the museum.) Also, garden equipment can be hidden behind a wall in the garden corner.
Pre-built raised beds were an option. The gardeners decided to build the beds to show visitors an approachable option, Shetrom says.
In between teaching programs and despite last year’s heat, they built four raised beds with lumber connected with concrete corner blocks anchored with rebar. Wood mulch donated from a neighbor covered the paths in between.
Railroad ties were nixed because they’re often treated with creosote. The preservative helps the ties last longer, Shetrom says, but the gardeners preferred to use newer materials.
One option to add more railroad in the future: sleeper stones. These stone blocks supported early railways before they were replaced by treated wooden ties.
“We have some of those old ones and we’ve been tossed around the idea of having it almost as like a footpath in the garden potentially,” Shetrom says. “But they still do have some of their metal spikes in them, so we have to worry about getting those steel chunks out of them.”
ERIN NEGLEY | Staff
Heirloom plants
Then comes the question of what to grow in a garden at a history museum. The site’s collection includes reproductions of posters Pennsylvania Railroad used to promote victory gardens. These gardens popped up around the country and throughout Lancaster County in lots big and small. Yet the researchers haven’t found much about what was grown on railroad property.
For seed and local gardening history, the museum gardeners turned to the Heirloom Seed Project at Landis Valley Village and Farm Museum, another state historic site. Last year, they planted their first crop of beans, peas, tomatoes, peppers and squash. The seed project donated seed. The museum donated the harvest to Lancaster County Food Hub.
This year’s garden started with Risser sickle pea, an 1800s snap pea shaped like a sickle and passed down from generation to generation.
Railroad garden research
If you know about railroad gardens (edible, ornamental and green spaces) in Pennsylvania, past and present, send details to museum educator Jesse Shetrom at jshetrom@pa.gov.
Next to harvest are Jimmy Nardello peppers, an Italian frying pepper.
“We’re kind of just working our way through the heirloom seed catalog,” Shetrom says.
Large, scalloped Zapotec tomatoes are ripening.
Finally is the scarlet runner bean, a vigorous grower with red flowers and, later in the season, multi-colored beans.
Mammoth dill, nasturtiums, marigold and borage planted among the edible crops add color and attract insects, hopefully to create natural pest control, Shetrom says.
Replicas of World War II era posters are at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, 300 Gap Road, Strasburg Township, on Friday, Aug. 15, 2025.
BLAINE SHAHAN | Staff Photographer
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Railroad research
This year’s museum summer camp included a lesson in the garden on commerce, transportation, agriculture and what people eat. With technology, a tomato grown in California could end up in an east coast store in a refrigerated car.
‘You just start seeing these heirloom varietals kind of disappear cause everyone likes that mass producible consistency that was afforded by railroads and refrigeration,” Shetrom says.
He searched the museum’s collection and found WWII-era railway menus mentioning rationing and limits on how much passengers could order. He found a yearbook recapping a long-ago Pennsylvania Railroad Garden Club. The garden’s sparked an interest in homefront cooking and more-with-less recipes. (Note: if readers know what is “Philadelphia chicken,” spotted on a Lehigh Valley Railroad menu, let Shetrom know.)
The native flower garden outside the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, 300 Gap Road, Strasburg Township, on Friday, Aug. 15, 2025.
BLAINE SHAHAN | Staff Photographer
Garden plans
Like many new gardens, there are plenty of ideas in this one.
A new native plant garden next to the victory garden is filled with small plants such as coneflower, joe pye weed and elderberry. Eventually, Shetrom would like to see pollinators find the flowering plants and visit the victory garden.
Train-obsessed volunteers play a big role at the museum Perhaps plant-loving volunteers could help tend to the garden.
Maybe a local chef could create something from a future harvest, Shetrom says.
In the meantime, along with exploring marvels of railroad engineering, visitors can learn about heirloom and native plants. Next season, they might even grow the same in their ow gardens.
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