THE Station Inn here in western Pennsylvania is utterly lacking in amenities. There’s no air-conditioning, no television of any kind, no in-room phones. Nor is there a fitness center, a Jacuzzi, a sauna or a pool. The beds are all twins.

Yet guests from across the continent and beyond return again and again to this bed-and-breakfast, where they sit on the rambling front porch of this ramshackle former hotel, built in 1866, 150 feet from a major railroad artery, and watch the trains go by.