East Broad Top sale

Bessemer867 · **Joined:** Mon Dec 16, 2019 1:40 pm **Posts:** 13

The Railroad has released a very good video on the East Broad Top and their plans for the future. I'll be honest, it's not a railroad I have closely followed, so this really has my attention now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... e=emb_logo

Alexander D. Mitchell IV · **Posted:** Mon Feb 17, 2020 12:14 am

WVNorthern wrote:

How many track-miles are there between Orbisonia and Colgate Wye?

The EBT marketed the ride as a "ten-mile, 50-minute round trip" for decades.

But the official EBT timetables showed four miles between Orby (Mile/station 11) and Shirleysburg (mile/station 7). Shirleysburg's station site was 1/2 mile up from the clay spur that was the basis for the wye. Further, I undertook a painstaking measurement of the route on Google Earth Pro and came up with 3.4 miles from the station at Orby to the middle of the main between the wye legs at Colgate Grove.

BUT:
Add in backing the train around the wye at Colgate Grove AND wyeing the train at the Shade Gap wye, backing as far as possible back past the switch, and I come up with an additional 1.5 miles per trip.

Total: 8.3 mile round trip............

co614 · **Posted:** Mon Feb 17, 2020 7:50 am

Excellent video. It will be most pleasing to witness this iconic giant coming back to life.

We all owe the relatively few true believers who stood by this gem through years of hard times a strong thank you for keeping the faith believing that somehow, some way this day would dawn.

Thanks also to the 3 giants of steam Bennett Levin, Wick Moorman and Henry Posner whose financial generosity have given it the funding needed to make it real.

A real life example of " never give up "

Ross Rowland

Kelly Anderson · **Joined:** Tue Sep 14, 2004 7:52 am **Posts:** 2477

ctjacks · **Posted:** Mon Feb 17, 2020 12:15 pm

Maybe I am missing these details in all that has been said over the past few days - but, what is the vision for the future business model for the EBT? And who will pay for the work needed to even get basic service back to the picnic grounds restored, then for restoration of the rest of the line?

Is the intention to have the EBT be completely self-sustaining, as is Strasburg? Or to require public funding, such as the C&T and the Western Maryland Scenic RR? Or will the new owners finance/bankroll the restoration, plus ongoing operations? I think it is a stretch to think the EBT could ever be completely self-sustaining, especially if operations are expanded, and given the large investment needed now to restart operations.

If the new owners will need public funding shouldn't they make that clear up front? So there are no misunderstandings on this point, as there have been with the WMSRR in recent years?

I have walked the currently-unused portions of the EBT, and today they consist of two rails sitting on the earth. The ballast and the ties are all completely gone, and the wooden bridges are also gone - with two rails suspended in the air over the water. The good news is that the rails are still mostly there, with a handful of exceptions, such as through the cemetery. And, it is also good news that the RoW hasn't been cut by other development. But every inch of the railroad that will be reopened will need a total rebuilding down to the dirt at this point.

Chris.

Crescent-Zephyr · **Joined:** Wed Jan 20, 2016 1:15 pm **Posts:** 1716

You’re talking about the successful former CEO of a Fortune 500 company here. These guys know what they are doing.

PrrOpCrew · **Posted:** Mon Feb 17, 2020 1:55 pm

Regarding Mount Union. While I agree that the Mount Union of today doesn't have the kinds of draw in terms of historic structure remains, etc. as it did in the 1960's, from a preservation perspective everybody is missing the one major bonus for the continued restoration mission of the EBT. If you reconfigure the land where the Yard and coal washing/sorting plant were, you could build a state of the art restoration facility to repair and recreate EBT locomotives and rolling stock. This would allow all of the restoration to be done "on site", but in a facility that isn't as archaic as the shops and roundhouse in Orbisonia.

Also, as part of the facility I would propose installing a turntable. Historically the EBT almost always turned its locomotives for mainline trains so forward was "forward". The tradition continued with the installation of the wye at Colgate Grove. Unfortunately only within the last 20 years has the land formerly occupied by the wye in Mount Union been removed. In light of this problem, this is why I would propose installing a turntable in Mount Union in association with a restoration shop.

The work of the shop itself could be a draw, but if not you could at least allow for a 15 minute "Frostburg Layover" where everybody detrains, sees the locomotive turned on the turntable and they reboard the train to hear it pull the hill south to Orbisonia.

Just my thoughts on why Mount Union has more worth than people think.

Alexander D. Mitchell IV · **Posted:** Mon Feb 17, 2020 3:24 pm

ctjacks wrote:

Maybe I am missing these details in all that has been said over the past few days - but, what is the vision for the future business model for the EBT? And who will pay for the work needed to even get basic service back to the picnic grounds restored, then for restoration of the rest of the line?

Is the intention to have the EBT be completely self-sustaining, as is Strasburg? Or to require public funding, such as the C&T and the Western Maryland Scenic RR? Or will the new owners finance/bankroll the restoration, plus ongoing operations? I think it is a stretch to think the EBT could ever be completely self-sustaining, especially if operations are expanded, and given the large investment needed now to restart operations.

If the new owners will need public funding shouldn't they make that clear up front? So there are no misunderstandings on this point, as there have been with the WMSRR in recent years?

I think what excites us who have been watching this develop for decades--at least 40 years, in my case--is the POTENTIAL.

For the time being, it's rather obvious that the motivation has been to properly transfer as much of the property in question to a qualified, legal 501(c)3 non-profit as soon as possible. Neither the Kovalchick family nor the EBTPA seemed to have qualified or qualify as such.

People with means, and charitable/philanthropic foundations/groups, are not, as either their rules or the law, going to contribute to the preservation or restoration of a privately-owned asset.

But now that there's a preservation-minded non-profit in charge, "we/they" can revisit any number of proposals--most specifically the now-dust-covered studies by the National Park Service and the Commonwealth of Pa. with regards to acquisition and preservation of the railroad as a historic asset and potential educational and tourism resource. Now the studies can be revisited and updated, if "they" choose. The condition and status of various properties and assets need to be revised--for example, the Saltillo depot is no more, and there's been some stabilization and rebuilding.

The "acquisition" part, FOR THE MOST PART, just got taken care of. (Let's ignore the EBTPA for the moment, because it appears the EBTF is as well.)

That's a few million or so that can be dedicated to other parts of the project. And, as I have emphasized, with a dedicated preservation non-profit owning it, the stage has been set for other serious underwriters to step forward with cash, grants, or other offers of help or proposals.

There's even the possibility that if the NPS or Pennsylvania Historic & Museum Commission were to approach the EBTF with the "right" revised proposal, the EBTF could turn the whole thing over to either of those entities, having thus fulfilled their mission of long-term preservation. That is a "political" game, however, much like the inducements made to the Feds to make Steamtown into a National Historic Site. The EBTF has at least one underwriting member skilled at politics, maybe three.

(This is NOT the thread to debate the merits or lack thereof of government ownership/operation of the EBT. Go start another thread, if so inclined.)

Even the Friends of the EBT are likely to get a serious uptick in contributions and volunteerism as a result of this, for the same reasons--people will help a non-profit group of volunteers far more than a perceived "rail baron" supposedly/apparently worth "millions" that's asking millions for the property they want to help out, no matter how much good the FEBT does.

(The slight danger in all this is that now the people that wrote off contributing because "Kovalchick's got millions, he should do it" are equally apt to see Levin, Moorman, and Posner as "sugar daddies" that will just step up and pour even more "moneybags" into the project.
No.
They did THEIR part. Now it's OUR turn.)

Any way it proceeds from here will take time. Nobody, as far as I know, is being forced to meet an arbitrary deadline such as the town's bicentennial in 1960. And there's bound to be a moment or two of "the dog that caught the car" ("NOW what?!?") that comes up--I don't like the looks of the Runk Road overpass, as one example, and I don't want to look too closely at the bridge over Blacklog Creek......

Chris Webster · **Joined:** Sat Aug 25, 2007 12:45 am **Posts:** 1027

CA1 wrote:

Which EBT locomotive needs the most work for service?

My guess is #15 -- during the last year (or two?) of Salone's management, the railroad was filling #15's tender with dirty pond water.

Kelly Anderson wrote:

All of them... Take your pick.

I once stopped by Rockhill on the Friday before a Fall Spectacular. #15's dynamo had broken and the crew was using the backhoe's bucket to swap it with the dynamo off another locomotive.

Alexander D. Mitchell IV · **Posted:** Tue Feb 18, 2020 8:56 am

Alexander D. Mitchell IV wrote:

With no disrespect intended to the caretakers for the past 60 years:
I can personally say that at least some of the operation and maintenance of the line and equipment was sub-par, and to a minor extent reminiscent of the "horror stories" of the last days of the last hold-outs of steam one could see in books such as Steam In the Sixties, Mixed Train Daily, Slow Train to Yesterday, etc. I have heard personal accounts of at least three incidents that, if all true, likely would have frightened even some loyalists away from riding the trains. (One has been documented: a separation of train at speed on the Runk Road overpass fill approaches.) I've heard it said that the intervention of a few professionals--most notably Linn Moedinger--kept the railroad from having another situation similar to the Gettysburg incident that many swore would shut down most steam railroading overnight in the U.S.

The two other incidents I have heard about have been recounted in print as anecdotes by Stanley Hall in 2009:

https://trn.trains.com/railroads/2020/0 ... aders-life

Quote:

One Saturday afternoon, two flues began leaking in the only engine still operable at the time, No. 15. It was losing so much steam, Hall says, that he had to go rescue it with the M-1. Hall pulled a coach behind the Brill unit to round out the day’s runs, then called his engineer and his hostler and opened up the front end of the Mikado, which was still too hot to work on comfortably. Inside the firebox was even hotter.

“We got a bunch of wet burlap and threw it on the grates, and green pine planks,” he says. “We ran two rods from the firebox in, so we knew which flues were broken. I made four plugs out of green white pine, eight inches long, and drove them into those two flues ’til you couldn’t drive them any further. We drove them in with a welding mask on, and an air compressor, and an air hose running in so you could breathe,” he says, laughing. “We didn’t know a thing.

“We drove those plugs in and fired her back up. We ran for two weeks with those plugs in that boiler. Inside the firebox they burned off even with the flue sheet, and just petrified. At the front end, they just stayed like they were. They didn’t blow out either, and we carried 175 pounds of steam behind them.”

The pine plugs, he says, were a trick he learned from a local man who operated a steam saw mill.

There have been terrifying moments, too. Years ago, an engineer brought No. 17 and its train all the way back from the far end of the line with neither injector working, and the intervening decades have done nothing to dull Hall’s anger.

“When that injector doesn’t come on the second time, your brain ought to go in gear and you ought to pull the fire where you are. You don’t keep pulling your injector and getting it hotter and hotter and blowing your water away. You’re not taking any in, you’re blowing it away.

“I cut the lever on the coaches right here in front of the station, while the train was moving and I was screaming at the top of my lungs,” Hall says. He climbed in the cab and “headed for the ball field, and wouldn’t you know it, there was a county league having a ball game. I was going to blow a locomotive up with 400 kids there. We slammed it into reverse and I pulled it up over by those stone abutments that they uncovered when they took the [coal refuse]. Elmer Barnett and I pulled the fire. It seemed like it took two hours, but we pulled it in two minutes. Literally dumped her out.”

I was told by another source that a fish had clogged the one injector. (They still pumped water from the creek at the time.)

co614 · **Posted:** Tue Feb 18, 2020 9:08 am

Gentlemen, please allow me to make a suggestion.

3 of the industry's most successful men have donated substantial ( read 7 figures) funds each to a new 501 c 3 whose mission is to bring this iconic treasure back to life and to give it a long term future.

Rather than get all lathered up about this or that relatively minor detail how about joining in as contributor ( either cash and/or physical participation) to the new EBTF and be part of the journey forward.

This is much too good an opportunity to allow minor league "stuff" to spoil it.

IMHO-Ross Rowland

AlcoGuy · **Joined:** Sun Mar 08, 2015 10:23 am **Posts:** 41

Thank You Mr Rowland, well stated, and i could not agree more.

Ed Kapuscinski · **Posted:** Tue Feb 18, 2020 10:33 am

Alexander D. Mitchell IV wrote:

With no disrespect intended to the caretakers for the past 60 years:
I can personally say that at least some of the operation and maintenance of the line and equipment was sub-par, and to a minor extent reminiscent of the "horror stories" of the last days of the last hold-outs of steam one could see in books such as Steam In the Sixties, Mixed Train Daily, Slow Train to Yesterday, etc. I have heard personal accounts of at least three incidents that, if all true, likely would have frightened even some loyalists away from riding the trains. (One has been documented: a separation of train at speed on the Runk Road overpass fill approaches.) I've heard it said that the intervention of a few professionals--most notably Linn Moedinger--kept the railroad from having another situation similar to the Gettysburg incident that many swore would shut down most steam railroading overnight in the U.S.

The two other incidents I have heard about have been recounted in print as anecdotes by Stanley Hall in 2009:

https://trn.trains.com/railroads/2020/0 ... aders-life

Quote:

One Saturday afternoon, two flues began leaking in the only engine still operable at the time, No. 15. It was losing so much steam, Hall says, that he had to go rescue it with the M-1. Hall pulled a coach behind the Brill unit to round out the day’s runs, then called his engineer and his hostler and opened up the front end of the Mikado, which was still too hot to work on comfortably. Inside the firebox was even hotter.

“We got a bunch of wet burlap and threw it on the grates, and green pine planks,” he says. “We ran two rods from the firebox in, so we knew which flues were broken. I made four plugs out of green white pine, eight inches long, and drove them into those two flues ’til you couldn’t drive them any further. We drove them in with a welding mask on, and an air compressor, and an air hose running in so you could breathe,” he says, laughing. “We didn’t know a thing.

“We drove those plugs in and fired her back up. We ran for two weeks with those plugs in that boiler. Inside the firebox they burned off even with the flue sheet, and just petrified. At the front end, they just stayed like they were. They didn’t blow out either, and we carried 175 pounds of steam behind them.”

The pine plugs, he says, were a trick he learned from a local man who operated a steam saw mill.

There have been terrifying moments, too. Years ago, an engineer brought No. 17 and its train all the way back from the far end of the line with neither injector working, and the intervening decades have done nothing to dull Hall’s anger.

“When that injector doesn’t come on the second time, your brain ought to go in gear and you ought to pull the fire where you are. You don’t keep pulling your injector and getting it hotter and hotter and blowing your water away. You’re not taking any in, you’re blowing it away.

“I cut the lever on the coaches right here in front of the station, while the train was moving and I was screaming at the top of my lungs,” Hall says. He climbed in the cab and “headed for the ball field, and wouldn’t you know it, there was a county league having a ball game. I was going to blow a locomotive up with 400 kids there. We slammed it into reverse and I pulled it up over by those stone abutments that they uncovered when they took the [coal refuse]. Elmer Barnett and I pulled the fire. It seemed like it took two hours, but we pulled it in two minutes. Literally dumped her out.”

I was told by another source that a fish had clogged the one injector. (They still pumped water from the creek at the time.)

I don't know, that all sounds absolutely appropriate for the historic fabric of the road.

Not a good idea in modern times, but probably the exact same thing that happened on numerous similar lines many times over historically.

Alexander D. Mitchell IV · **Posted:** Tue Feb 18, 2020 11:06 am

Ed Kapuscinski wrote:

I don't know, that all sounds absolutely appropriate for the historic fabric of the road.

Not a good idea in modern times, but probably the exact same thing that happened on numerous similar lines many times over historically.

There was another excursion line that was absolutely the "poster child" operating in precisely this "historic" throwback fashion.

The Gettysburg Railroad.

If you're new around here, go look it up, and see what happened there.

What MAY have "worked" (if we want to call it that) for the Argent Lumber Company, the Graham County RR, the Edgemoor & Manetta, the Magma Arizona, the Reader RR, etc. in their final days of commercial steam locomotive operation is completely unacceptable for a railroad inviting the public to ride behind it, and volunteers to work on it, in the litigious Twenty-First Century. At least, not without signing waivers and releases a-plenty.

Ed Kapuscinski · **Posted:** Tue Feb 18, 2020 11:11 am

Alexander D. Mitchell IV wrote:

Ed Kapuscinski wrote:

I don't know, that all sounds absolutely appropriate for the historic fabric of the road.

Not a good idea in modern times, but probably the exact same thing that happened on numerous similar lines many times over historically.

There was another excursion line that was absolutely the "poster child" operating in precisely this "historic" throwback fashion.

The Gettysburg Railroad.

If you're new around here, go look it up, and see what happened there.

What MAY have "worked" (if we want to call it that) for the Argent Lumber Company, the Graham County RR, the Edgemoor & Manetta, the Magma Arizona, the Reader RR, etc. in their final days of commercial steam locomotive operation is completely unacceptable for a railroad inviting the public to ride behind it, and volunteers to work on it, in the litigious Twenty-First Century. At least, not without signing waivers and releases a-plenty.

Well of course. Obviously you can't do those things today for the same reasons you SHOULDN'T have done them in the past, but it's still an interesting aspect of the railroad's history.

East Broad Top sale

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