Stop. Look. Listen.

State-owned museums were open free Sunday for Charter Day (every second Sunday in March), including three in Lancaster County: the Landis Valley Museum, the Ephrata Cloister and the Railroad Museum of Pa. Guides explained the austere way of life at the Cloister as the bright late-winter sun shone in the windows and lit up the small whitewashed rooms and worn wooden furnishings, and visitors, chilled by the cold breeze, contemplated the long, arduous days of the celibate brothers and sisters of Conrad Beissel’s community. Leaping ahead to the 19^th century and over to Strasburg, the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania also drew an eager crowd of train enthusiasts young and old.