According to our local paper (yes, there is a paper in the woods up here!) the PA Dept. of Conservation & Natural Resources is seriously considering a rebuild to the tune of around $45 million as an alternative. I'll post the link in Interchange when www.timesobserver.com gets to it (Wednesday). Meanwhile, the park is already reopened on a imited basis last weekend and is supposed to be reopened 8/1 as soon as the trees are cleared from the same windstorm that took down the bridge. One alternative that is supposedly completely 'off the table' is demolishing it.

The 'support link' that was mentioned in the paper is www.kinzuabridge.com with an online petition. Supposedly the park draws like 160,000 per year - this is going to be a decision based as much on regional tourism economic impact as preservation or history and very much swayed (pardon the pun) by public opinion or the absence thereof. The 'key issue' is whether or not McKean Co. gets listed as a disaster area allowing federal relief according to the article.
I'm not even going to step into the philisophical quicksand on whether or not a 'rebuilt' bridge is as historically significant as the original, or if it should be left as it sits now (which is interesting in itself) or what should be done, but I'd hope that this discussion board really lights up on this one. What do you do with it, and should the 'rail preservation community' take a public stance here? Possibly one of the better RR preservation questions of the age me thinks. Hmmm. What could YOU do with $45 million of public money, especially when people may still come to see the WRECKED bridge as an attraction.....???? And then do you preserve the wrecked bridge 50 years from now? Only thing I've seen as an equal is the preserved remains of the Mower Lumber mill at Cass in its burned-out state.
The article also mentioned that the part that DIDN'T blow down was what they had been working on for repairs.

randygustafson@stoneconsulting.com

Lets See
$45,000,000 divided by 160,000 visitors equals $281 per visit. If I allow $19 for each visit for maintenance (nice round off ???) that comes to $300
per visit. If I can spread this out for 10 years (no interest or finance charges) this comes to $30 per visit. The yearly maintenance account gets $3,040,000 per year and if I can bank $2,000,000 of that per year it comes to $20,000,000 at the end of the 10 year project as an endowment for the next replacement due in 90 or so years.

Is this worth it to the area ??? Will the average visitor be worth $30 to the area ???

lamontdc@adelphia.net

The funds Randy mentioned are state funds, not local funds. If the state of PA spends $45 mil to rebuild Kinzua while EBT languishes, it would be criminal. Kinzua was neat, but it's gone, sadly.

EBT is a national treasure and it is still there, for now. Come on, PA. Spend wisely!

Rob

rdavis@rypn.org

The newspaper article implied that the only way to get $45 million was if Federal Disaster Relief was on the table and it was a state match of some kind - and they need a declaration to qualify. i.e. the State doesn't have $45 million to spend freely here either, even on something as deserving as the EBT. The original state-funded repair budget on the bridge raised a lot of eyebrows and surprised a lot of people that they actually decided to do it. But whether it's 4 million, 40 million, or $400 million - whatever the state decides to spend, yes, priorities do matter, including preservation priorities.

The irony here is that if the tornado had hit the EBT.... Let's not go there!

randygustafson@stoneconsulting.com

Right, Randy. I misread it thinking the PA Dept. of Conservation & Natural Resources *had* the money.

> The newspaper article implied that the only
> way to get $45 million was if Federal
> Disaster Relief was on the table and it was
> a state match of some kind - and they need a
> declaration to qualify. i.e. the State
> doesn't have $45 million to spend freely
> here either, even on something as deserving
> as the EBT. The original state-funded repair
> budget on the bridge raised a lot of
> eyebrows and surprised a lot of people that
> they actually decided to do it. But whether
> it's 4 million, 40 million, or $400 million
> - whatever the state decides to spend, yes,
> priorities do matter, including preservation
> priorities.

> The irony here is that if the tornado had
> hit the EBT.... Let's not go there!


trains@robertjohndavis.com

> Right, Randy. I misread it thinking the PA
> Dept. of Conservation & Natural
> Resources *had* the money.

It would be hideous pork and undoubtedly fiscally irresponsible, but I'm all for any creative fund raising which could be done to get it rebuilt. It broke my heart when I heard it had been destroyed.

Henry


The Railfan Network

rpynboard@railfan.net

The general run of museum and tourism funding says no one should expect money to show up for reconstructing Kinzua Viaduct. That raises the question of what to do with the remains. I think it's entirely reasonable to expect people to continue to come to the state park, although perhaps not so many as if they could walk or ride across the whole bridge.

Pennsylvania already has at least one significant structural-failure tourism draw: the NPS' development of the South Fork dam that precipitated the Johnstown Flood. I was the only visitor there on a cold winter morning (when I arrived in a decrepit Ford pickup full of coach air-conditioning parts) but the sight of the holed dam and empty reservoir is mighty evocative, at least to someone who's read the McCullough book on the subject. I believe this site does better numbers during the summer, when it forms a combination with the Flood museum in Johnstown and is a stop on a tour of Flood-related sites. I can envision tourists standing at the end of the viaduct fragments and staring into that almighty gap the way I looked at the South Fork dam. The continuing coal-mine fire across the valley from the Pennsylvania Coal Mine Museum was another nifty tourist attraction that could probably be merchandised better despite the danger of exploded car tires if you stop too long in the wrong place.

Don't underestimate disaster as a tourism draw and profit center. Last week it cost me over $100 to take the family to the exhibit of relics pillaged from the wreck of the Titanic. This was a very high-rent installation at the Detroit Science Center, with a couple neat touches. Each ticketed visitor got a "White Star Line boarding pass" in the name of a real passenger. A graphic at the end of the tour told which fractions of first, second, and steerage passenger survived, by sex. Very good at getting across the message that if you were male or an immigrant, you were likely to be an ice cube. The salvaged relics were displayed in (somewhat simplified) replica ship interior spaces with good exhibits on the sociology of ocean travel in 1912.

The Kinzua collapse doesn't have the casualty counts and notoriety of these two disasters, but I personally would go back to see the remains, at the risk of being told, "I told you so," by my wife, who refused to walk out onto the Viaduct in 1994.

Tourism advice: don't miss the Kane Manor House B&B, with its tale of how the mansion's builder, a physician, took out his own appendix on his dining-room table with the aid of mirrors and local anaesthetic, and the Civil War pistols used as bannister trim.

Aarne Frobom
The Steam Railroading Institute
P. O. Box 665
Owosso, MI 48867-0665

> The funds Randy mentioned are state funds,
> not local funds. If the state of PA spends
> $45 mil to rebuild Kinzua while EBT
> languishes, it would be criminal. Kinzua was
> neat, but it's gone, sadly.

> EBT is a national treasure and it is still
> there, for now. Come on, PA. Spend wisely!

> Rob Is this a joke! If the state of Pa spent wisely. They would not be dumping so much of the tax payers money into that wreck of the K4! bye rob

,,,,,,the State
> doesn't have $45 million to spend freely
> here either, even on something as deserving
> as the EBT. The original state-funded repair
> budget on the bridge raised a lot of
> eyebrows and surprised a lot of people that
> they actually decided to do it. But whether
> it's 4 million, 40 million, or $400 million
> - whatever the state decides to spend, yes,
> priorities do matter, including preservation
> priorities.

Ah, yes, but this is the same state that just spent $33 million PER MILE to build the mostly-empty PA 43 toll road that includes a hideous pair of bridges passing 150 feet above the W&LE's spectacular Mingo Creek Trestle.



bruceman@stargate.net

Heck with $45 million bucks, buy and save the EBT!!!!!!!!

Bruce
Wapakoneta, Ohio

bnsf89@bright.net

> Heck with $45 million bucks, buy and save
> the EBT!!!!!!!!

> Bruce
> Wapakoneta, Ohio

If a choice of where to spend the money was available I don't think anybody could argue that EBT would come first ... however save a little to stabilize the remains


lamontdc@adelphia.net

IF there is money available to rebuild the bridge, it wouldnÂ’t be money available to save the EBT.

For very good reason, government money, at all levels (federal, state and local) is separated into various pots, or funds, and there are firewalls separating the various pots. Most of us distrust goverment to some degree, and by setting up designated funds, we avoid at least some of the "raiding" for which some politicians are known.

IF the area is declared a disaster area, then FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) money becomes available. Some comes in the form of loans, some in the form of grants. Some may require local matching funds, but, the previous stabilization work, and the fund which were to be spent on the rehabilitating the bridge prior to the collapse would probably qualify as at least part of the match. Its possible, with state and local commitment, that funding for a reconstruction, or at least park development (this could include a visitor center with interpretive displays, a wye to turn the tourist trains, with an over look or other mitigation) to offset the loss would be found. In many cases the federal emergency match will make park or other public facility development possible which would otherwise take far too long.

FEMA money is designed to bring a community back. While most of their funds go to rebuilding housing and infrastructure, and offsetting local agency emergency efforts, if rebuilding a historic bridge lost in the disaster will help, they the money MAY be available.

For EBT to qualify for FEMA money, the site and surrounding area would have to experience a significant disaster. This would have to be a community disaster, not just a fire in the shops. Remember that the government has tried to help save the EBT, using preservation, or transportation enhancement money (separate pots from FEMA) but without some type of guarantee that their funds will be spent for public good (a preservation easement, or public or non profit ownership) those efforts cannot go forward.

To some extent the Government would tell you that the K4 is preserved (and a second is preserved at RRPM). It will very likely still be around in 100 years. Getting it restored, while taking much longer than we may like, is happening, and in the mean time its under cover unlike some other pieces, including the entire EBT, which is at risk. They would probably tell you to look to your community to restore the locomotive.

Randy Hees

http://www.spcrr.org
hees@ix.netcom.com

what's an EBT?

You wrote: “ what's an EBT? “

The East Broad Top (EBT) railroad is a 40+ mile narrow gauge line in central Pennsylvania, which stopped running in 1955, but was never scrapped. Tourist service started in 1960 over a small portion of the line.

What remains is a complete narrow gauge railroad plant, including locomotives, cars, shops, and track. But it is privately owned (by the scrapper) and as such is not normally eligible for government preservation funds. The owner, who with his father has preserved the line for 49 years, is alternately praised and vilified on this list. Most of us as railroad preservationist think the line is a national treasure... But it needs lots of help, and its unclear where that help will come from, and what form the long term preservation (a relative term when we are talking about a line which has been in private preservation for half a century) will take.

Randy Hees


http://www.spcrr.org
hees@ix.netcom.com

> what's an EBT?

For more information on the East Broad Top Railroad visit this URL:

http://www.spikesys.com/EBT/

The East Broad Top Railroad Homepage

ebtrr@spikesys.com