Autumn Colors Limited

Autumn Colors Limited at Railroad Museum of New England

Danielle and Pahl posing in front of one of the Pullman Cars

A few years ago in October 2024, I attended a much shorter meeting with my fashion community at the Railroad Museum of New England in Thomaston, CT. We wore Halloween inspired fits and rode the historical Pullman cars to the Pumpkin Patch, where we had several lovely group photos taken by an on board photographer. However, Pahl didn't make it to that meeting, and I wanted him to experience the joy that is the Railroad Museum of New England for himself. 

Now since I bought a ticket to the Pumpkin Patch ride, I am forever on the Railroad Museum of New England's email subscriber list. They have a lot of amazing programs throughout the year for young and old alike.  Several of their programs make a stop at our favorite western CT chocolate factory, Fascia's Chocolates in Waterbury. Also a few years ago at this point, I hosted a "Sweeten Your Spirits" tasting and tour program for my fashion community at the factory itself. You can check out our sweet group photo in the Google review, or check out my blog post about it here. Fascia's Chocolate's tasting tour made me into a chocolate snob, and I'm not mad about it. 

When the Railroad Museum of New England offered their Autumn Colors Limited excursion in mid October 2025, which includes a two hour leisurely train ride during the day to view the autumn foliage on the historical Naugatuck railroad line that also included a stop at Fascia's Chocolate factory, I jumped on it. Autumn Colors Limited is one of those unique excursions that could technically be for any age, but they did have a bar car, so your experience may vary. They had several different ticket prices to choose from, and it determined what kind of seats you would be sitting in. I paid for the $25.00 Premium Coach tickets (they were the same price as the regular Coach tickets, just to see what the difference would be), and we were in a slightly newer car (probably 1970's vs 1920's) with updated lighting and seats and two cars away from the bar car (which we did not indulge in). The Lounge Tickets, only $5.00 more provided lounge chairs that faced inwards on the car for ease of talking and communicating with others. I only know this because we had to walk through one of the Lounge cars to exit the train to go to Fascia's factory. 

I booked our ride on the first day of the Autumn Colors Limited program, which was a Friday afternoon. It was actually completely sold out and there were tons of people of all ages. We had planned to dress up in our historically inspired fits using Autumn colors as our palette. 

Danielle wearing Ladder Lace Ribbon Medium Length by Metamorphose

I had my heart set on wearing this dress from Japanese brand Metamorphose. I had purchased this dress at the tail end of 2024 on Wunderwelt, which is a Japanese website that sells used as well as new clothing. Technically I was initially looking for the brown color way of this dress, but when the red popped up in new with tags condition on the second hand part of the website, I went for it. This dress is the Ladder Lace Ribbon Medium Length JSK with Cape (Floral Print) in Bordeaux. I love florals, and I love the simplicity of creating the design of the dress with lace and ribbon placement. This might even be considered "old-school" style at this point. The material is very high quality with the flower printed fabric at 100% cotton, lined with satin, ribbon torchon lace and satin ribbon. This is one of those dresses that doesn't have a zipper, so you have to make sure that you can get the maximum measurement listed over your bust and hips into order to wear it. I had debated on getting the Plus Size or the Regular Size, and this is the Regular Size at the Medium length.  The cape comes with it and is very nice as well, although the satin lining does tend to make it slip around on the shoulders when it comes down to any kind of movement. The dress did fit a little tightly around my bust at first, but it does stretch and there is a lot of stretch. I have long legs, so with a pair of blocky oxford heels I was able to make the medium length work quite nicely, but there are others who have not been so successful (hence why I believe it was on the used site in pristine condition to begin with). 

For my blouse, I paired a Miss Point mesh champagne high neck blouse with sleeves under the dress. I also wore white wristcuffs with wine colored bows attached to them (even though the blouse itself has a flared sleeve cuff, I figured I really wanted to bring the wine red throughout the coordinate at all angles). I wore brown shoes because I was initially going to wear a brown floral half bonnet as my headpiece that would ABSOLUTELY NOT stay on my head. Besides, the ribbon was a much darker wine and there was brown lace...it was just all wrong anyway. Scrambling for another head piece, I grabbed the white and wine red rectangle headdress that exactly matched the choker that I wore with this outfit, but now the red was too bright. It just looked wrong on my head too. Lastly, I tried this inexpensive head bow that is a dark red with decorative white trim. The trim echos the edges of the torchon lace enough to look more cohesive despite being a darker wine red than the dress. I kept it on for my posed photos, but chickened out when I got to the museum after having to park super far away from civilization (my car really could have been its own stop on the train). You might be wondering why I didn't just buy the matching headdress when I got the dress. It's because it was not available to purchase. That's the one thing that can be frustrating with buying used items, you often get one or the other, and it is a rarity to get both at the same time!

Pahl posing in front of the Pullman Car

Pahl had a much easier time matching all his pieces together, because they are part of a three-piece suit that he pre-ordered around the same time as when I purchased my dress. This is a green slightly tartan wool coat with matching trousers and bow tie. The waistcoat is a perfect contrast of dark wine as is the pocket square on the left chest pocket. This dark wine color is in the pants very subtly. Pahl matched his round black glasses to his black oxford shoes and slicked his hair back to look like a business man of the 1920's, to match the historical cars of course!

Sometimes we wear the same colors to match our outfits, but I daresay we were quite complementary on this excursion. And we perfectly matched the colors in the autumn leaves!  It was a little hard being the only two people in the entire excursion dapperly dressed up. Even the staff at the railroad museum were confused and asked us what the occasion was. Sometimes I feel like we are performance artists when we dress up in 20th-century clothes to go to a historical place while everyone else wears comfy modern sweats and cargo shorts with boots or sneakers. 

But when we arrived at Fascia's Chocolate Factory, the people who worked at the factory all remembered us and treated us like old friends! They wanted to know when we would be bringing a group back. They really appreciate when people dress up to go to the factory. I was able to get my favorite item from the factory, which is the 72% Semi Sweet Break-Up Bar. They only sell this at the factory itself, but it is a two pound solid chocolate bar with scores on it to help you break it. It's so thick it's hard to just break with your hands, so I recommend a knife and cutting board. One of these bars last me about 4-5 months, so I can keep my chocolate hoard adequately stashed. It's January as I write this, and I still have a little less than 1/3 of the bar left, so I am going to need to go back, probably in March for another. 

Mood Lighting Selfie on the Premium Coach Car

It was definitely the perfect date to celebrate autumn and I appreciated the group of older women who fought over taking our couples photo in front of the older train cars. The photo came out so well, we were able to use that photo in the 2026 Danielle and Pahl Calendar too!  After the train ride, we met at Clevelands' Country Store in Plymouth, CT, just a little ways up the street really. This added to our performance art experience as the store and eatery is housed in a completely restored 221 year old barn and has a sundae shop filled with all sorts of vintage candy to purchase. The portions on the sandwiches were extremely generous to the point that I did not have room for dessert and was still able to feed myself for two more meals. So if you find yourself in Middle/North Western, CT, don't pass up the opportunity to go to any of these places!