The boxcars were owned by Kovalchick. One can not fault them for wanting to remove a cash asset from a piece of property they are selling so as to provide a clean bill of sale and avoid any future claims, liabilities or disputes.

Alan Maples

Perfectly agreed, in MOST situations.

However, this action reveals that the so-called "East Broad Top Preservation Association" is either completely fraudulent, completely incompetent, or completely impotent, or has a completely different definition of "preservation" than we do.

The only "Hail Mary" move I can think of at this point is for the FEBT or some other party to immediately sign a lease or purchase agreement on the EBT rolling stock and a storage agreement with the "EBTPA". IMMEDIATELY. Today.

This is from WW II and the MRS -



About as close as I could find to the photo.

Steve

Photos from December 14, 2013:

So, to recap: there were several boxcars and many, many hoppers that have been notoriously and openly stored pending some form of eventual disposition for decades, and a lot of people who now seem to be surprised and upset by the inevitable disposition are doing the too little, too late foam-mongering dance again.

It certainly would have been nice for anybody who is reacting to have actually acquired one or more of them and removed them before it reached this point. Asking all of us to now get upset along with you......sorry, guys. The cars appear to have been in restorable condition, so what prevented you from acting when you still had a chance to accomplish the goal?

Be proactive. If there's something you think should be preserved, step up to the plate and build a workable plan to preserve it.

Feel free to agonize and kick yourselves privately if you must, but leave the rest of us out of it.

dave

I've suggested several times, here and elsewhere, that the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania acquire an EBT hopper while they still can. It would meet their criteria for collection in many respects. It was built in PA, used on a railroad in PA, hauled PA coal, represents PA's narrow gauge lines, and so on. An EBT hopper, on a short length of dual gauge track, end to end with a standard gauge two pocket hopper, would provide a very interesting exhibit. But perhaps its too late...

(By the way, I'm not in a position personally to save one. I've done just about enough for older equipment, Alco diesels, and gotten beaten down for my efforts. Someone else can fight this fight.)

What has doomed the preservation of those hoppers is the asking price. Who has some $7000 to purchase a rusted out hulk and an extra $4000 or $5000 to move that hulk to their property.
Many of use care; A LOT about what happens to the EBT RR and it's equipment but the reality is that it's in private hands and we have very little or no say it what happens.

Kevin K

Not very close at all. Let me repeat, these were not, NOT, the MRS cars built for service overseas. As far as I know, NONE of those cars ever operated on the US rail system, because they were deficient in strength and lacked US couplers and safety appliances.

The USATC purchased many used freight cars over the years, plus a few built new, which were basically copies of the then current North American standard designs. The cars at Mount Union were one of these groups of second hand cars, rather plain Jane boxcars of WWI vintage.

I am likely responsible to the rumor that these were ex-B&M cars; I viewed the cars a number of years ago, and the former numbers were still clearly stenciled inside, and relying on my increasingly faulty memory, I said they were B&M. Someone else corrected me that they were BAR, and I was able to find a photo of a matching car in BAR lettering. The distinctive thing about these particular cars is they were short cars, likely 36 footers.

I don't know where the other two roads mentioned came from, but I didn't inspect all the cars, and they may have come from mixed sources. I really didn't pay much attention at the time; it was neat to find an abandoned string of boxcars frozen in time for so long that good size trees were growing between them, but further reflection made me realize that they were nothing significant to any collection I was familiar with, and certainly not worth what Kovalchick likely wanted for them, much less what it was going to cost to move them. Maybe if they had been examples of USRA design cars from the period of government control during WWI, but they weren't.

far as I see the boxcars were not part of the hopper sale, I presume the hopper sale is still on, but if money logic says money logic the hoppers could go the same way.
Of course you could look for an extension of the due date. If these cars were anywhere else they may have been scrapped a long time ago. If anything perhaps one could have been kept for historical representation based on condition restorability.

The hoppers are going to be like the lost engines...move them...sell them, or its off to the scrappers.

What Alcos??

I pulled out all my WW2 military RR manuals, tech specs and other data (My primary collecting is US WW2 stuff, so I have a lot of paperwork on US Army RR units and equipment). I agree with Dennis, these boxcars don't appear to be any cars built specifically for the military.

I don't know if this will help in identifying the origins of these cars, but I recall that when I saw them they looked like a USRA-designed single-sheathed boxcar with early Dreadnaught ends--but they had only four panels per side vs. the USRA cars' six, and the stenciled length was 36 feet vs. the USRA standard of 40 feet.

I can't tell you how much I wish the cars and the yard could have been preserved (and how often do you find WW I era or 1920s era equipment around in any quantity today), but that's capitalism for you.

As with anything that Salone is involved in, pay attention to what he DOES, not what he says. And do not, under any circumstances, put any of your hard-earned dollars into any venture involving him.

Were these lamented boxcars ever East Broad Top RR & Coal Co. property from its common carrier days, or are they just more recent acquisitions of its present owner, stored on the property, but not until after the end of regular operations?

My understanding, or at least what I was told at one point by someone who seemed to know better than I did, was that the USATC cars were somehow part of a convoluted "trade" for fifteen EBT hoppers that went to the White Pass & Yukon for ballast/work-train service in 1968, twelve years after the EBT shutdown. The souvenir booklet sold by the EBT for years included a photo of one of the hoppers being loaded for shipment, using the Mack locomotive that Railways to Yesteryear owned for a spell. Of course, all of that could just be coincidence, as there were supposedly fifteen cars in each lot.....