Steam Rides

ide behind steam on a 10-mile, 50-minute round trip over the East Broad Top Railroad — one of the oldest narrow gauge lines in America. The EBT is unique — it is the last 3-foot gauge line in the east still operating in its original location. Built in 1873, the East Broad Top was designed for the movement of coal from the Broad Top mines of central Pennsylvania to Mt. Union. Here the fine grade semi-bituminous coal was transferred from the narrow gauge EBT cars to standard gauge hopper cars for shipment over the Pennsylvania Railroad. The East Broad Top survived until 1956 as a coal hauler, long after similar railroads had been abandoned, and now a portion of it has been restored for your enjoyment and education. In 1964 the EBT was designated a "Registered National Historic Landmark" by the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service.

East Broad Top Railroad / 1994

he initial delight of discovering the East Broad Top can only be fully savored by an unhurried tour of the roundhouse, shops, and other facilities of the once-bustling coal hauler all of which appear virtually untouched by the passage of 40 to 50 years. In addition to the 2-8-2 Mikado steam locomotive which pulled the train of open-platform wooden coaches from the long-vanished golden age of railroading, five other steam engines of the same wheel arrangement slumber inside the multi-stacked enginehouse. All of these locomotives are still capable of being fired up to spell the hard-working engine performing the "operating duties" that day.

Frank Kyper / Ramble into the Past on the East Broad Top / 1971

y virtually all the laws of economics, a pleasantly-antiquated stretch of 36-inch gauge railway such as East Broad Top should have given up the ghost years ago — leaving little more than a weed-overgrown scar on the ground and a few faded photographs in its wake. As a railroad constructed in the 1870's to haul coal and the forestry products of Broad Top Mountain to the standard gauge Pennsylvania Railroad at Mount Union, EBT outlived its usefulness a number of years ago. Only by developing a newer and quite different market — tourists and railfans — has the last narrow gauge common carrier to operate east of the Rocky Mountains managed to hang on to the sometimes-thin thread of existence.

Frank Kyper / Ramble into the Past on the East Broad Top / 1971

nlike most other operating railroad museums, East Broad Top is not a transplant of equipment, facilities and trackage swept together from a wide variety of locations. Nor is its equipment painted in flashy colors, resembling an amusement park more than a railway. It is maintained just as it always was, a surviving segment of a genuine narrow gauge pike-one of the very few which survived as a bustling operation until the second half of the 20th century. East Broad Top's rails between Mount Union and Rockhill were first spiked down in 1872 and 1873, making this stretch of track the oldest narrow gauge line in the United States. The surviving slim gauge routes in the Colorado Rockies were not built until a few years later.

Frank Kyper / Ramble into the Past on the East Broad Top / 1971

f the East Broad Top is approached from the south, via turnpike Exit 13 at Fort Littleton, there are only a series of roadside signs of increasing size along Route 522 a highway which the state has completely rebuilt in the last few years to indicate what is in store, until the twin boroughs of Orbisonia and Rockhill Furnace are entered. Only the most observing eyes can spot a vacant roadbed paralleling the highway across the narrow valley.

But if a southbound approach is made, from Mount Union, ample indications of once-extensive slim gauge railroading are evident along old Route 522. An extensive railroad yard-containing hundreds of rusting hulks of hopper cars and overgrown with weeds can be viewed briefly on the left. Farther south, a pair of heavily-rusted rails run alongside the road for several miles.

But the realization that something very unusual is afoot may have to wait at least until after the railroad track crosses Route 522 just north of Shirleysburg. When the track again appears south of Shirleysburg, the railheads are brightly polished. If the hour and date are right, a cloud of smoke and steam will soon appear. The cloud soon materializes into a puffing and snorting steam locomotive, pulling a train of three or four open-vestibule passenger coaches and two freight cars converted to open coaches. Here is East Broad Top! The squat locomotive with its brass boiler bands is pulling a string of dark green coaches over 85-pound rails which are only three feet apart.

Frank Kyper / Ramble into the Past on the East Broad Top / 1971

upper image Mt. Union, Pa / Jul 2020 / RWH
lower image Orbisonia, Pa / Jun 2003 / RWH