A Day with Thomas and the Mines

Last weekend, Thomas the Train was right down the road from us in Phillipsburg, New Jersey! We decided to make an impromptu day trip to surprise the kids.

It was a free event if you just wanted to browse through. If you wanted to ride the Thomas train you had to purchase a ticket for anyone over 2 years of age. We decided to make an experience of it and hop on the train!

During the Thomas train ride, the speaker played songs from the Thomas the Train show. Our kids have seen the show a handful of times so I think they recognized them but didn’t necessarily sing along. A few times during the ride, Thomas spoke over the speaker. At the end of the ride, the kids were given Thomas the Train “junior engineer” certificates to take home as keepsakes.

Once we were finished on Thomas, we had hoped to hop on the steam train (a big perk of us going) but quickly found out it was in the shop until likely winter. That was a bit disappointing but we hoped on the next train anyways. This ride took us up to the Susquehanna mine.

Up at the Susquehanna mine, we had a picnic before the demonstration in their picnic area. Once it was our turn we went in and learned the history of the mine. Soon it was time to pan for gemstones and fossils.

Everyone who came got a bag of sand to pan. Ryan and I opted to give ours to the next people so we could just help the kids with theirs. We found our places and helped the kids pour the sand into their pans, dip them into the water and then discover their treasures inside.

After they found their treasures, we bagged them up and waited for the train to take us back down. We talked about our day and discussed their favorite parts of the day. Overall, I think they really enjoyed the experience of riding the trains, meeting Thomas. They even talked about the Thomas train set being at Barnes and Nobles that night when were visiting and talked about our train excursion!