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I’m always on the lookout for fun things to do with my kids, so on a recent trip, my daughter and I visited the Bucks County Children’s Museum in New Hope, PA.

The Bucks County Children’s Museum is located in Union Square on the edge of New Hope’s very charming downtown and accessed from the same parking area as the New Hope and Ivyland Railroad. It opened to the public in 2011 and offers a wide variety of activities for kids to explore.

It’s worth noting that I visited just a few months before the museum will temporarily close in September 2025 to reimagine about half of their play spaces. I find this a bit surprising to be honest because the spaces here still felt quite fresh. However, if you’re visiting in 2026 or beyond, read this review as more of a general overview and not a specific what you can see and do article.

The museum is recommended for kids from 1 to 7. My daughter was seven years old during our visit and she had a great time, though she still enjoys pretend play. Kids beyond that stage might not have as much fun here, so just keep that in mind.

The Bucks County Children’s Museum is divided into eight different play spaces, each quite nicely themed. There’s enough variety here that kids should enjoy playing no matter their interests.

You can roughly divide these play spaces into two groups: the first focusing on pretend play and the second on more hands-on scientific concepts.

The pretend play areas include a Bucks County space with a small climbing wall (representing High Rocks at Ralph Stover State Park) and slide, a hospital, train, grocery store area, and more. These areas are a lot of fun for kids that enjoy pretend play, and there is a lot of variety here for them to enjoy.

The other half of the museum covers scientific concepts in a fun and playful way. Here, kids can enjoy pneumatic tubs, a small water table, building areas and more.

Probably our favorite space here during our visit was the Shadow Freeze Room, which is hidden in a back corner. Here, a flash of light freezes your shadow on the back wall, and it’s a ton of fun to see what shapes you can make. Don’t miss this fun spot during your visit.

It’s worth noting that buying tickets ahead of time his high recommended as the space can sell out (though capacity definitely isn’t overcrowded if it’s sold out). During my visit on a random summer weekday, a local camp had the museum nearly sold out during our visit. We almost didn’t get in, an issue that could have been easily avoided if we’d bought tickets ahead of time.

Just something to keep in mind when planning your visit.

Overall, we had a ton of fun at the Bucks County Children’s Museum. Despite the upcoming refresh, the spaces here were well put together, and it seemed like all the kids there were having fun, including my daughter. I can’t wait to see how it improves once they are done with the remodel.

So, if you’re looking for something to do with younger kids in Bucks County, PA, I definitely recommend checking this spot out.

Note: The parking lot adjacent to the museum charges $2 per hour for parking. Make sure to feed the meter so you don’t get ticketed.

Looking for more places to visit nearby? Check out the Crayola Experience, Washington Crossing Historic Park, and Fonthill Castle.

Bucks County Children’s Museum

An analysis of three recent statewide elections found that problems with voting machines were rare and easily fixed.

This article is made possible through Spotlight PA’s collaboration with Votebeat, a nonpartisan news organization covering local election administration and voting. Sign up for Votebeat’s free newsletters here.

Pennsylvania voters encountered only scattered voting-machine malfunctions that rarely affected their ability to cast ballots in recent elections, according to a Votebeat and Spotlight PA analysis of problems reported to the state.

Counties reported a smattering of common problems with machines at polling places, such as paper jams and error messages. Such issues were typically fixed quickly by counties having technicians on call or simply replacing the machine.

For election officials, sending out a technician or staffer to a polling place is usually easier and more efficient than trying to walk a poll worker through a fix over the phone, said Forrest Lehman, election director in Lycoming County. Officials refer to these traveling helpers as rovers or roamers.

“Often you don’t know for sure what’s going on without sending someone out there,” Lehman said. His rovers are prepared with a “Swiss Army knife” of supplies to address any issue they may encounter, he said, and often the biggest delay is just the time it takes a rover to drive to the polling place.

Pennsylvania appears to be the only state to require counties to report voting system malfunctions after each election. The requirement is the result of an August 2023 legal settlement between the Department of State and a coalition of election security groups. Votebeat and Spotlight PA analyzed the reports for three elections since the requirement took effect: the November 2023 municipal election, the 2024 primary and the 2024 general election. The 2025 primary election reports haven’t yet been published.

The reports reviewed by Votebeat and Spotlight PA showed:

See a compilation of the reports.

The most common resolution involved replacing equipment, but election officials also solved problems by resetting a machine or switching to a second machine for the rest of the day.

The quickest resolutions, those that took 30 minutes or less, typically involved having a trained county worker go to the polling place and fix the issue.

The state doesn’t require counties to have roving technicians, but Amy Gulli, a spokesperson for the Department of State, said most at least have extra staff at the election office who can be dispatched as needed.

Karen Barsoum, Chester County’s election director, said her county uses two separate teams of workers — one of traveling technicians and another of roaming staffers to solve issues that can’t be resolved by poll workers.

Barsoum said the roamers serve as liaisons between her office and the precincts, providing the poll workers with extra supplies or just an extra set of hands if needed.

The technicians are available for more serious issues. They have the county divided into 10 zones, with one traveling technician stationed in each zone on Election Day with tools to repair, clean, or replace malfunctioning equipment.

Barsoum said the new requirement to fill out the malfunction reports helped Chester County more clearly see how poll workers should handle issues when they arise. The county developed its own form for poll workers at each precinct to fill out when machines malfunction, which includes step-by-step instructions and an explicit reminder not to let the issue prevent or delay voting. She then uses those precinct-level sheets to fill out the state reports.

“Poll workers cannot say, ‘Oh the machine is down. Please come back later,’” she said. “Now that’s not an option. Now it’s in writing — this is what you do.”

The reports show that the most consequential issues are typically due to human error — often one that should have been discovered through pre-election machine testing.

Northampton County’s 2023 ballot tabulation issue, which made it appear as if votes were being changed to candidates not chosen by the voter, and Cambria County’s issue with ballot printing during the 2024 presidential election were both problems that could have been discovered and fixed through proper logic and accuracy testing. But the counties failed to catch those issues in time.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at [email protected].

BEFORE YOU GO… If you learned something from this article, pay it forward and contribute to Spotlight PA at spotlightpa.org/donate. Spotlight PA is funded by foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results.

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Trains played a huge role in Pennsylvania’s development, and local museums and volunteer groups statewide help to preserve that history.

This story first appeared in PA Local, a weekly newsletter by Spotlight PA taking a fresh, positive look at the incredible people, beautiful places, and delicious food of Pennsylvania. Sign up for free here.

Fewer Pennsylvanians ride the state’s rail these days, but a network of train lovers work like locomotives to preserve the commonwealth’s rich railroad heritage.

From small exhibits in former rail cars, to a site run by the National Park Service, to a 100,000-square-foot state-chartered museum, organizations statewide make this history accessible — and even rideable.

Craig Sansonetti, president of the Ma & Pa Railroad Preservation Society, leads one of those groups.

He’s been mesmerized by trains since childhood, when his family owned a property that abutted the Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad. The short line once connected Baltimore, York, and dozens of small communities between them.

The young Sansonetti’s fascination with the railroad was so intense that he and his grandmother hopped on its very last passenger train in August 1954. Over 70 years later, the “Ma & Pa Railroad” — as it’s affectionately nicknamed — remains one of his passions.

“There was urgency to do something before the track was torn up and gone,” Sansonetti said of the preservation society’s formation in the 1980s, which began when 31 people teamed up to buy a section they still maintain.

Today, the volunteer-run nonprofit has 60 active members who work together to operate a “heritage village” in York County, where they teach visitors about the railroad’s ties to local history, and run excursions on the track it maintains.

PA Local spoke with workers and volunteers statewide about their passion for train history, and Pennsylvania’s special connection to railroads.

“You can’t talk about Pennsylvania history without talking about railroads,” Patrick Morrison, director of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, told PA Local. “It’s almost baked into the history, or the DNA of Pennsylvania as a modern industrial state.”

Building Pennsylvania

Railroads started being built in the commonwealth around the 1830s, and within two decades, Pennsylvania led the nation in their development. As the state’s rail network expanded, industries like coal, iron, and lumber grew in kind, as trains enabled those resources to be transported nationwide.

The rails boosted some communities, and birthed others.

One major example is Altoona. The Blair County city was developed by the Pennsylvania Railroad because of its proximity to the Horseshoe Curve, an engineering marvel that opened up rail travel across the Allegheny Mountains.

Altoona became home to one of the railroad company’s main shop complexes, and eventually one of the largest repair operations in the world. During its heyday in the 1920s, the Pennsylvania Railroad employed around 16,500 people there.

“The railroad literally built the community of Altoona, and without the railroad, I would say there would be no Altoona,” said Matthew Wolff, curator at the city’s Railroaders Memorial Museum.

Located across the tracks from Altoona’s present-day Amtrak station, the museum tells the story of local employees — “the conductor, the engineer, the brakeman, the shop workers” — across three floors of exhibits, Wolff said.

Decades after the Pennsylvania Railroad folded, plenty of Altoona locals know or are related to former workers, said Wolff. While the museum can’t offer specific information about visitors’ family members who worked for the railroad, it can still teach them about what the job was like in that era.

“In a way, you can make a family connection through these stories,” Wolff said. “It keeps family stories alive for younger generations who have an interest in the railroad, or might have an interest in doing family research.”

Museums large and small

Pennsylvania’s rail history draws enthusiasts from all over.

The Railroad of Museum of Pennsylvania in Lancaster County, which opened in 1975, sees around 85,000 and 90,000 visitors per year, Morrison said.

The state-created museum — a massive hall with over 100 real locomotives and railroad cars, plus numerous photos and artifacts — boasts on its website that it is “the first structure in North America built specifically as a railroad Museum.” Over its 50 years of existence, it has doubled in size, given its exhibits a makeover, and started constructing a 16,500-square-foot roundhouse exhibit building.

The Railroaders Memorial Museum is comparatively smaller, but draws between 30,000 and 40,000 visitors a year, Wolff told PA Local — including lots of people from out of state, as well as international tourists from other historic train hubs like England, Germany, and Japan.

Smaller rail museums don’t get as much traffic, workers told PA Local.

At the Ma & Pa Railroad Heritage Village, school visits help familiarize locals with the site, said Sansonetti.

But despite social media posts and posting flyers in nearby areas, he said, “We still have people who live not too far away who come by and say, ‘Gee, we never knew you were here.’”

Newtown Square Railroad Museum in Delaware County, home to several historic rail cars, faces the same dilemma.

Although the group promotes the museum through social media and co-hosts a festival with the local parks and recreation department every year, the site is still a “mystery” to some people who’ve lived in the area their whole lives, president Fran Franchi told PA Local.

“The challenge is that we need to grow the volunteer base and grow the donations,” Franchi said. “The challenge is keeping up with the maintenance on all of these cars.”

Everyday enthusiasts willing to dedicate their time are the coal in the engine of rail preservation and education.

Newtown Square Railroad Museum was started by two local history buffs, Sam Coco and Jack Grant, who wanted to fix up the town’s abandoned freight station building.

It’s now run by a small group of volunteers like Franchi, who got involved about a decade ago. A friend convinced her to join, and a fondness for trains — like those on the former Reading Railroad, which she remembers riding to and from Pottsville as a child while her uncle, a conductor, looked after her — helped win her over.

“I like trains,” Franchi said. “I just think they’re cool. But it’s important to keep the history for the future, for the people that are here now, for their children. There’s so many families that come and visit, and the kids just love trains.”

East Broad Top Railroad, a heritage railway and National Historic Landmark in Huntingdon County that draws around 35,000 riders per year, also has a robust base of volunteers. Its 1,500-member-strong “friends” group helps with maintenance and fundraising, said Rick Hamilton, the railroad’s marketing director.

The Friends operate a nearby museum about the railroad, and some members — some from as far as California and South Dakota, Hamilton said — come to East Broad Top to paint, restore windows, and perform other maintenance and preservation work.

“Whatever needs done, they’ll do it,” Hamilton said.

Even the state’s flagship museum, which employs around two dozen paid workers, also has 150 active volunteers who help restore rail cars and locomotives, catalogue archival materials, give school tours, and greet visitors.

Volunteering is how Morrison, the museum’s director, first got involved there almost three decades ago.

“It’s a pretty important part of what we do,” Morrison said. “We can’t do this without them.”

Connections to past and present

Rail travel isn’t what it used to be. After World War II, passenger service was supplanted by alternatives like cars and buses, and the patchwork of railroad companies that operated across Pennsylvania eventually went bust.

Despite that decline, railfans say it’s important to acknowledge trains’ part in building local economies and communities.

“Today’s children know more about the Revolutionary Era than they do about the time in which their great-grandparents lived, but transportation is key to all kinds of historical developments,” Sansonetti said. “The role that railroads played — and not just big trunk-line railroads, but railroads like the Ma & Pa in developing these communities — is a story that needs to be remembered.”

Of course, trains do still help sustain today’s economy, especially the manufacturing and energy sectors, with Pennsylvania having more operating freight railroads than any other state. And Amtrak links cities nationwide.

Rail museums make these important systems less invisible, said Morrison.

“We try to make sure that folks know how important and how connected they are, even though they may not have ever taken a train before,” he said.

“I’m willing to bet the products they buy in the store, at least some of them were probably delivered to that store by a truck that met a train … so at some point there’s a railroad in the story.”

BEFORE YOU GO… If you learned something from this article, pay it forward and contribute to Spotlight PA at spotlightpa.org/donate. Spotlight PA is funded by foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results.

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The two-day show at New Hope-Solebury High School will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the iconic Volkswagen Van.

NEW HOPE, PA — With sunny, dry weather forecast for Saturday and Sunday, the 68th edition of The New Hope Automobile Show promises to be among its best yet.

Taking place Saturday, August 9 and Sunday, August 10 on the grounds of the New Hope-Solebury High School (180 West Bridge Street, New Hope 18938) organizers say the show is a rare opportunity to see and appreciate the design and technology of automobile manufacturers from around the world.

This year the New Hope Automobile Show will be celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the Volkswagen Bus. The first VW Bus rolled off the production line on March 8, 1950. The iconic vehicle, also known as the Transporter or Bulli, has a rich history, evolving from its initial design as a commercial vehicle to becoming a symbol of freedom and adventure.

The show will spotlight the 75th anniversary of the VW Bus. (New Hope Auto Show)

In addition to spotlighting the VW Bus at this year's show, visitors will again enjoy two shows in one with Saturday's show featuring domestic classes and Sunday featuring foreign vehicles – from vintage and classic to rods and tuner cars.

In addition to a range of regular domestic classes, Saturday's field will feature Rods, including Hot, Rat, Street, Restomods, and Custom. Saturday’s edition will also have a class for replicars and a display only class for those vehicles that don’t fit other classes.

Sunday’s show spotlights foreign vehicles, from Aston Martin and Austin Healey to Saab and Volvo. Sunday will also feature a Tuner and a Display class.

Both Saturday and Sunday editions of the show will feature the 2025 poster car, a Volkswagen Bus in traditional blue and white.

A full slate of vehicles can be viewed at www.newhopeautoshow.com.

Gates open to the public both days at 9 a.m. with the show running until 4 p.m. Tickets may be purchased at the gate: $10 general admission; active duty military personnel and their dependents attend for free (must show ID). Children age 12 and under are admitted for free when accompanied by an adult. On-site parking is $5.

One of the oldest and most celebrated auto shows in the country, The New Hope Automobile Show features many of the finest antique and classic automobiles and motorcycles from across the eastern United States. The event has been staged in historic New Hope since 1957.

Proceeds from the show benefit community projects and student scholarships presented by New Hope Helping, which has grown from raising funds to support the needs of the New Hope-Solebury School District to fundraising efforts to support the community at large via auto show-related events, cultural events, sports, and music.

New Hope Helping has provided New Hope-Solebury High School with a new gymnasium, 17-acre recreation field, Community Center, and track, as well as annual scholarships to New Hope-Solebury High School seniors.

Additional donations are provided to regional non-profits, many of whom provide volunteers to help with The New Hope Automobile Show, which is New Hope Helping’s largest fundraising event. For more information, visit newhopehelping.org or www.newhopeautoshow.com.

Stay updated on all the happenings by following New Hope Helping and The New Hope Automobile Show on Facebook (New Hope Helping and the New Hope Automobile Show), calling 215-862-5665, or visiting newhopehelping.org.