STRC Program - Colebrookdale Railroad

Nathaniel Guest is Executive Director of the Colebrookdale Railroad Preservation Trust, Boyertown, PA. He also serves as an adjunct professor at Cornell University.

The Colebrookdale Tourist Railroad has come on line in the last decade and only through the ingenuity, passion and hard work of Mr. Guest. He holds a Bachelors's and Masters's degree in Historic Preservation from Cornell and earned his Juris Doctorate from Temple. Having had a lifelong interest in railroads, he discovered the almost abandoned Colebrookdale Railroad right of way which runs from Boyertown to Pottstown and saw its potential as a tourist attraction. At the time of his vision in 2011 he was a practicing attorney in Berwyn, PA and also active as a volunteer at the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum and Strasburg Historic Rail Road.

Nathaniel imagined something no one else saw and went about to create it. His railroad experience coupled with his historic preservation and legal knowledge gave him the foundation to create the organizational structure and funding strategy for the project. He built a team and secured funding to improve the right-of-way and acquire motive power and passenger rolling stock to bring back to life a service which started after the Civil War but had faded into history. The railroad now offers excursions of all types from scenic runs to full dinner trips. His project has become another small economic engine for an old town that has lost some of its industry
and jobs to globalization. In this year of “Imagine Rotary”, Nathaniel’s story is especially relevant.