Everett Railroad History

wesp · **Posted:** Thu Jan 29, 2015 9:41 pm

There was good stuff in the locked Everett thread. If the mods don't mind I will excerpt posts by Alan Maples here for the the record.

http://www.altoonamirror.com/page/content.detail/id/603350/Everett-Railroad-expansion-planned-in-Hollidaysburg.html

Quote:

Everett Railroad expansion planned in Hollidaysburg
Project includes station to allow recreational rides
January 25, 2015
By Sean Sauro (ssauro@altoonamirror.com) , The Altoona Mirror

Hollidaysburg residents and visitors may soon be riding the rails because of a planned Everett Railroad Co. expansion along Loop Road that includes plans to build structures to facilitate public excursions - an undertaking likely to cost about $1 million.

Quote:

The original Everett Railroad excursion train operated 1965-1970, inclusive, from the old Huntingdon & Broad Top Mountain depot in Everett, PA. For the last two years, the train was operated by the non-defunct South Penn Chapter of the NRHS.

Locomotive: Ex-Morehead & North Fork 2-6-2 #11 (Baldwin 1909)
Coaches: #101 - ex Erie Stillwell #2191
#102 - ex Reading #1544
#103 - ex Lackawanna #246 (modernized four axle heavyweight)
Caboose: #C-17 - ex B&O #2647
Open cars: #201 & #202 - ex B&O flat cars

There were two ex-B&O six axle wood passenger cars, one employed as a gift shop and one as a museum. There was a tank car for storing water. Privately owned ex-EJ&E office car #50 was on the line briefly. The South Penn Chapter later bought a Reading coach (#1461) which may have been used a few times.

All of the company owned equipment was sold to the Williams Grove Amusement Park in Williams Grove, PA, after the close of the 1970 season and was towed there on its own wheels by Penn Central. The steam engine and caboose have since been repatriated and are displayed by the Bloody Run Historical Society at the Everett depot, now relocated a short distance from the old right-of-way. The open cars, and I believe the tank car, are still at Williams Grove. The three steel coaches and two B&O wood cars sat at Williams Grove in derelict condition for years and I understand have since been scrapped. The EJ&E office car is in a private collection out west and the South Penn's Reading coach I last saw a few years ago in poor condition at the Coral Caverns attraction in Manns Choice, PA.

The present Everett Railroad still operates under the company's original 1954 charter but other than filing cabinets full of old paperwork, there is little relation to the ex-H&BT line.

Alan Maples

Quote:

The "original" Everett Railroad was only about four miles long. As I understand it, the steam train would back from the Everett depot about a mile to the Pennsylvania Railroad bridge spanning Route 30 and the Raystown Branch of the Juniata River at Mt. Dallas, PA. After pausing on the bridge, the train would then travel north, past the depot, to the end of the track near Tatesville a distance of about three miles, before returning to the station.

Just before they quit excursions at the end of the 1970 season, the steam train made a couple of trips over the PRR Mt. Dallas Branch to Bedford. It was advertised as a 22-mile round trip.

Alan Maples

Heavenrich · **Joined:** Mon Aug 23, 2004 11:07 am **Posts:** 630

Thanks for posting --

According to the NRHS website, the South Penn chapter started as the West Penn chapter in 1956, changed it's name to South Penn before dissolving in 1971.

Where I'm a bit confused is the original thread talked about this railroad resuming "excursion service" and in my vocabulary, a tourist road that runs on a regular basis (even for example, just once a month), doesn't run "excursions".

What makes this even more confusing is there already is an Everett Railroad running a tourist line and a visit to their facility will be an event at this spring's joint AATRM/NRHS conference.

Bob H

PaulWWoodring · **Posted:** Fri Jan 30, 2015 12:31 pm

Midwest Chapter, NRHS, ran an excursion from Akron, OH to the Everett RR somewhere around the Fall of 1965 or '66 (I would have been 8 or 9). It was one of the few excursions they ran in that era on the B&O main. Most of the trips I rode with my family that originated in Akron were on the EL. To say that this was an ambitious schedule might be an understatement. Working from what I later figured out as an adult, the train took us to Somerset, PA on the S&C sub of the B&O, that comes off the main at Rockwood, PA (visited by C&O 614 in the early '80's out of Pittsburgh), and from there we were taken by chartered buses to Everett. I remember that we didn't arrive in Everett until very late in the day, and by the time the train I rode backed onto the trestle, the Sun was starting to set. I also remember that we didn't get back to Akron until around 3 am.

Alexander D. Mitchell IV · **Posted:** Fri Jan 30, 2015 4:42 pm

To clarify:

The Everett RR started as, and remains, a short line FREIGHT railroad. It followed the grand tradition of many short line freight railroads--Gettysburg, LA&L, Blue Mt. & Reading, etc.--of ALSO offering passenger excursion service on weekends and other occasions. But Everett was first and foremost a freight operation, unlike, say, the Strasburg, which was acquired in 1958 with the aim of excursion service, or the Western Md. Scenic line to Frostburg. The Everett was started in 1954 as a freight line, and has remained a freight line through its many permutations and retreats.

The lengthy research by me or rehash by Brother Maples would have to cover whether the 1960's excursion operation was at the instigation of the South Penn NRHS or the railroad. The railroad has changed hands since its original excursion days, and I would leave it to Maples and others to declare whether this is another case of a "railfan railroad owner playing with steam trains" or whether there's another/separate business plan afoot. (Not that "playing trains" went badly for the Strasburg, BM&R, Ohio Central, etc.!)

At least some more recent excursions operated on the Claysburg and Morrisons Cove lines after their sale by Conrail were operated as "one-offs" or local special event trips by the Horseshoe Curve Chapter NRHS, and a couple former Lackawanna MU cars "floating around" down there somewhere are/were formerly owned by the Chapter during the late 1980s, "1361 days".....