The East Broad Top Railroad is happy to announce a limited schedule for the summer of 2021!
------
While ongoing restoration efforts don't allow for a more comprehensive schedule quite yet... we are thrilled to offer four weekends throughout June and July of diesel-powered train excursions and tours of the Rockhill Furnace Machine Shop Complex. We are also proud to partner with the Rockhill Trolley Museum to offer EBT passengers the ability to purchase trolley tickets in conjunction with their train ride or shop tour.

You can also mark your calendars for a variety of new special events throughout the year! Details and schedules will be released gradually, keep watching our social media for updates!

We certainly want to acknowledge that there is an incredible amount of anticipation for the return of steam to the EBT. Our dedicated crews are making fantastic progress on the restoration of No. 16. At this moment, we are not announcing any timeline for its completion. We will continue to bring you progress updates regularly.
---
We hope to see you this summer! Visit https://bit.ly/3nzsYY8 for more details, fares, and to book now!

Now this is how you handle a steam restoration - or any restoration. You keep folks updated but make no promises and sell no tickets. There are just too many risks for delays in projects this complicated. Good job EBT.

What about promising a ticket, WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE, to anyone who makes a sufficient donation now? Of course, the organization has to have the will to honor such a commitment\, even if people or policies change.

You hit one big problem - is there a way to have the organization keep a "promise" that is years old? How good will records be kept? What if that person dies, will a family member get the right to buy the ticket? It opens up a lot of problems when a promise is made for the future.

Also, if you promise someone a ticket, what is a reasonable time frame? Look at some of the restoration efforts that take many years, even decades. What is reasonable? How soon will someone with a "promise" grow tired of waiting and start complaining? Look back at complaints here on RPN about projects that in three months weren't ready.

Tickets are a sensitive thing and I would discourage any promises about rides, tickets, etc. They imply some reasonable deadline, and an actual completion of the project. If it is not done (define timely here) will people ask for their money back? It just becomes messy. My advice would be to use hats, a book about the project, some physical object as an award. If you want to play with tickets, having an early right to buy the tickets might work, but what order is set and for how much money? Is the first fund raising effort going to get rights over the second effort, etc.? Is volunteer physical labor going to count? Will you actually have the capacity? Lots of questions that are hard to answer, and even keep your word on.

If you didn't learn from the 1309 WMSR fiasco with selling tickets in advance of a steam locomotive' restoration completion ( and then doing it again !! ) then you'll never learn.

There's only one way to handle it...it will be done when its done !!! Period.

Ross Rowland

If you're making a sizeable donation, the price of a ticket down the road shouldn't be a burden.

My concern isn't the price of a ticket, it's availability. I'm not one of the insiders who normally get to find out about trips and ride them.

I’m not an “insider” anywhere, but I do sign up for the email newsletters offered by most projects. Those who use Facebook or Twitter can like or follow and news comes across their pages. Everybody finds out more or less at once and the message is less apt to get mutilated as it’s passed along. Having this degree of speed and flexibility lets a crew say “here’s what we’ll do in case X happens” or “we were able to add a coach and have extra seats on the Sunday morning run.”

Yes , thanks to the modern Internet, it only takes 1 blabbermouth for the whole connected World to find out.