Traveling to Washington County takes between one and one and a half hours from most Butler County locations, but while there, visitors can experience worlds gone by.

In a crisp white shirt, black pants and a neat black cap, conductor Frank Shinkets showed passengers the nostalgic trolley era recently as he called out, "Step up," and punched their tickets.

Then the motorman rang the bell. Although the trolley was leaving its home at the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum, its happy clang signaled the beginning of a trip back to a time where commuters boarded charming wooden trolleys to get where they had to go.

Visitors swayed back and forth to the clickety-clack of the car down four miles of track before making a loop back to the stationhouse.

"In most museums old things are restored and then people get to look at them. Here, you ride them," said Scott Becker, curator of the museum.

Becker said the idea for the museum was born in 1954 as the trolley era died. When most of the cars were being burned, the museum's founding fathers collected enough money to buy three of them.

The West Penn Railway's number 832 and two others were rolled into Washington County and by 1962, the museum opened.

Since then, 45 cars were acquired from the United States and abroad.

Number 1711 is a modern streamliner that ran on the Pittsburgh line. It is one of 5,000 PCC cars built between 1936 and 1950, many of them by Pullman Standard in Butler."The fares were usually equal to the price of a loaf of bread. When they first began running, fares were a nickel," said Shinkets."Even later on, you could get a pass for the weekend for a dollar and ride anywhere. All major cities had the PCC cars. They were so well built, no-one re-ordered them."A suburban car that ran on the Philadelphia line in the early '20s features wicker-like seats that provided a more comfortable ride than the wooden seats of the city cars.The car, like many at the museum, still carries advertisements, both original and reproductions, of those in the early '20s. One on this car read, "Sweep the communists out of our government." A measuring pole at the front of the car was used to measure passengers who paid according to height.The Number 3756 that ran from Pittsburgh to Washington in the 1920s featured ornate wood construction, brass striker plates for striking matches, a bathroom and vents, decorative chandeliers and "low floors" for easier access.Though they are painted orange, these trolleys were known as "yellow cars" due to the color that emerged after the paint began to fade."There are only two left of the 1,000 in existence and this is one of them, " said Shinkets, who volunteers as a motorman and conductor on Saturdays.

Another volunteer, Tony DiCenzi, sanded, painted and refortified parts for the seats of a trolley car that was being restored. But he has far more experience than his 20 as a volunteer. DiCenzi did similar work for the Pittsburgh Railways Company, where he began working in the 1920s.Becker said volunteers log about 27,000 hours a year at the museum doing everything from running the trolleys to raising funds.While many cars are in various stages of restoration at the museum, a half-dozen are in running order including a streetcar named Desire - the one that Blanche DuBois stepped from in the Tennessee Williams play of the same name. "We got it for one dollar when the New Orleans line closed in 1964," said Becker.Among the 31 trolleys exhibited is one that ran on the Harmony Line from Pittsburgh to Butler. After 32 years the line closed, and the car became the "Dew Drop Inn," a bar that was later located in Ellwood City.During the late '30s it was common for people to pick up old trolleys for next to nothing and convert them into homes or places of business, Becker said. Three such "mobile homes" are on display at the museum. "A couple came over from Jeanette who used to live in one of them," Becker said.The museum acquired the Dew Drop Inn in 1984. "It had to be stored under a tarp for years and now it is finally out where people can see it," said Becker. Beer taps and its name are features that are still visible. "We need a half a million (dollars) to restore it," said Becker.But that is insignificant in comparison to the amount of money needed to realize other plans for the museum.Through the hard work of its volunteers, the museum has added an education building including a theater, a gift shop and the new 28,000-square-foot Trolley Display Building that opened this spring.But future goals include building a visitors center with a station, food concessions and streetscape identical to areas that existed during the trolley era.

Twenty miles from the trolley museum, Miss Adams, dressed in a tidy white blouse and long full skirt, rang yet another bell and invited tourists into her one-room schoolhouse, one in a scattering of log buildings in the wooded village.The visitors entered a world governed by the hickory stick that she keeps close by at Meadowcroft Museum of Rural Life, near Avella."I'll allow you to go ahead in, even though you did not line up," Miss Adams said firmly with a wink. In actuality, she is one of several costumed "interpreters" who guide tours at the museum.The classroom had two sizes of desks to accommodate first graders as well as eighth graders, each one bearing a small slate, a piece of printed cloth for wiping and slender pieces of graphite.Miss Adams pointed out that the names written on the blackboard (not slate, but logs painted black) were the names of actual students who had attended the school in 1890.Her lesson included an explanation of the water bucket near the entrance to the school. "Children brought little tin buckets like these for lunch and a cup for water. To prevent catching one another's illnesses, children were asked to not dip twice. That's where the saying, 'double dipping' originated."For a teacher who was valued at only $37 per month, Miss Adams really knew her stuff. Of course, if Miss Adams had been Mr. Adams, she'd have made $42 per month. The salary included room, board and domestic help.

The raised "recital" platform that winds three fourths of the way around the perimeter of the classroom is where the teacher and guests delivered their lectures and students read aloud from their McGuffy readers.It was also used for plays, she said. A pot-bellied stove that students huddled near for warmth is the centerpiece of the room.After our lesson, Miss Adams allowed a tiny "student" to pull the heavy rope that hung at the front of the room and the school bell sounded throughout the village. "Don't let the bell take you with it," she cautioned as guests made their way to the George Miller Log House, circa 1800.There, Sarah, another interpreter, showed the "creepy stools" used by the Millers, eight Scotch-Irish family members who once lived in the two-room dwelling. "They ate their daily meals seated around the open fire on these stools," she said.Descendants of the Miller family, brothers Albert and Delvin, founded the museum in 1955 when they purchased 200 acres of land that was originally part of their grandfather's farm.They planted more than 300,000 trees, and the new park-like setting was opened in the early 1960s as Camp Meadowcroft. By 1969 the Millers had relocated several threatened historic structures to the park and opened Meadowcroft Village.Sarah pointed out ropes beneath the featherbed in the same room which were tightened to prevent the feather mattress from sagging. "That's where we got the saying 'sleep tight,'" she said.Outside the cabin, guests played games the inhabitants would have played. One, called "graces," challenged players to toss wooden hoops back and forth using four long sticks.

On weekends, visitors might also find themselves pulling taffy or watching demonstrations of cooking over the open fire, spinning, weaving or making soap and apple butter in the Hamilton Log House.The village includes a fully operational blacksmith shop, one of only two 19th century log churches documented in Western Pennsylvania, a covered bridge and an exhibition building that currently houses "Lets Play: Pastimes of the Past," a display of 19thcentury toys and games.A permanent exhibit also features a collection of memorabilia and carriages that belonged to Delvin Miller (1913 to 1996), a renowned harness racer and horse breeder.Delvin's brother, Albert Miller, had an interest in archeology, and a dig beginning in 1973 yielded 2 million artifacts and ecofacts and has been determined to be the oldest site of human habitation in the Western Hemisphere.This 16,000-year-old campsite is now the Meadowcroft Rockshelter. It was named a Save America's Treasures site in 2001 by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and is currently awaiting National Historic Landmark status. Tours of this special site are offered during museum hours.

After a long day of traveling back 16,000 years, many tourists are ready for some refreshment, heading to the Sarris Candy Factory and Ice Cream Shop in Cannonsburg.Travelers there are greeted with the nostalgic tinkling of a player piano accented by stained-glass lamps and crystal chandeliers.Tucked behind shelves of giftware and plush animals and cases brimming with molded chocolate stands a castle built of 800 pounds of chocolate."It's solid chocolate and all edible," said the candy man himself, Frank Sarris, who has been in business for 45 years."We started with only chocolate. Then, in 1978 we made the store bigger and decided to put in an ice-cream parlor. … We get a lot of out-of-towners. The one day we had seven buses."Sarris said they make their own ice cream and have about 30 flavors, plus seasonal favorites."Say peaches come in. We make peach," he said.Although the ice cream flavors might change, the shop's décor maintains the old-time flavor of other Washington County sites.