The Railroad Sights of Gallitzin, Pennsylvania

!±8± The Railroad Sights of Gallitzin, Pennsylvania

Little more than a speck in Pennsylvania's Allegheny Mountain region, Gallitzin provides a significant draw to both railroad and history buffs. It is the very mountains surrounding it, once conquered with track, which sparked the engineering feats to be seen today.

Located midway between Altoona in the east and Johnstown in the west off of the appropriately-designated "Gallitzin" exit of US Route 22, the town itself, a borough bordered by Gallitzin Township and Tunnelhill in Cambria County, was incorporated in 1872 and took its name from the prince who founded nearby Loretto.

Developing round coal and coke production, it ranks as the tenth-highest city in the state, its topography mandating the very tunnels for which it is now known, since prohibitive grade, then beyond current engineering maturity, left little other option in the railroads' quest for westward expansion.

Three area tunnels were ultimately bored through Gallitzin's peaks. The first, the New Portage and located under Tunnelhill at a 2,167-foot elevation, was completed on December 10, 1852 after E. Rutter and Sons, contracted for the 0,000 project, manually attacked dirt and rock with shovels and picks with their 300-strong team. The second, the 3,605-foot-long Allegheny and located at Milepost 248, was completed in 1854, and first used on February 6. Coupled with the Gallitizin, it is considered one of the "twin tunnels."

The latter, constructed between 1902 and 1904, was employed, along with its Allegheny brother, by the Pennsylvania Railroad. They were the highest and longest engineering feats of the time, enabling the railroad, after negotiating the Horseshoe Curve, to continue its westward travel from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh.

Its use, however, was no longer needed when the million Conrail Pennsylvania Clearance Improvement Project, initiated because of the progressive loss of state-circumventing rail traffic, lowered its floor to provide clearance for double-stacked cars and widened it to accommodate dual-and dual-direction-track. Employing more technologically-advanced construction means than its 19th-century crew counterpart, the 90-strong team completed the work in August of 1995, leaving the once-equal Gallitzin tunnel trackless and abandoned.

Gallitzin rail line ownership paralleled the ownership changes of the railroads themselves. The very short-lived Penn Central, formed in 1968 as a result of the merger between the almost-institutional Pennsylvania Railroad and New York Central, yielded to Conrail by means of the bankruptcy process, itself created by the amalgamation of several faltering northeastern lines, such as the Erie Lackawanna, the LeHigh Valley, and the Reading. A dual purchase of Conrail by Norfolk Southern and CSX Transportation in 1999 ensured that its Pennsylvania routes, plying the tunnel through Gallitzin, were maintained by Norfolk Southern's Pittsburgh line. Most of its eastbound trains employ track one through the New Portage Tunnel, while its westbound ones use track three through the Allegheny Tunnel. The latter's track two can be used for both.

The tunnels facilitate both passenger and freight transport. Amtrak, for instance, routes four daily trains through them. Coal cars, destined for powerplants, travel easterly and return empty for further replenishment by Pennsylvania's coal mines, while half of its operations transfer intermodal shipments to the Midwest, particularly to Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City.

Gallitzin Tunnels Park and Museum:

The area's railroad heritage can be experienced-in motion-at the Gallitzin Tunnels Park and Museum. Its Community Heritage Museum, sharing the center with borough offices, the library, and the police station, displays railroad memorabilia and model trains and shows the "Once Upon a Mountain" film in its 24-seat theater room.

The park, located across the street, between the museum and the actual tunnels, features a restored, 1942 Pennsylvania Railroad NSC caboose. Originally built in Juniata Shops and acquired from Conrail, the car, bearing number CR23081, features a 36-foot length, ten-foot width, 15-foot height, and 40-inch wheel width, and was restored by Pennsylvania Railroad volunteers. Its interior, alive with radio transmissions from trains using the tunnels, sports signal lights, an air brake system, sleeping quarters, a rest area, a pot bellied stove for heat and cooking, and the caboose-characteristic cupola.

An observation platform overlooks the once-identical twin tunnels-the Gallitzin, on the left, sporting its original height and width, but now trackless with only its dirt bed remaining, and the Allegheny, on the right, displaying its higher and wider "mouth" and projecting two tracks.

Frequent operations, detailed by the Norfolk Southern train schedule available in the museum and listing times, origins and destinations, and types of freight, ensure train identification, while the tunnel's almost-echoing effects amplify their power, sending vibrations, via the ground, right to the observer's feet.

Allegheny Portage Railroad:

Only a mile from the Gallitzin Tunnels Park and Museum is another important sight, the Allegheny Portage Railroad. Like the tunnels themselves, it was one of the 19th century's major engineering feats.

Although the nascent United States offered significant opportunities, its sheer size and lack of infrastructure equally offered significant obstacles, particularly to most of the European immigrants who had entered the country by means of its traditional New York-Ellis Island threshold and now wished to journey westward. Roads, of any form, traced their paths along the eastern seaboard, but were separated by the imposing Appalachian Mountains, whose natural barrier was virtually impenetrable. A section of them in Pennsylvania, the Alleghenies, rose like a roadblock between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and the few rudimentary trails over them-clogged, rough, and muddy-were often choked by the foot, horse, and wagon traffic laboriously inching over them.

Strung across the state and rising to thousands of feet, the mountains challenged engineers to conquer them. Technology, however--in little more of an advanced state than the country itself--was almost nonexistent.

But the Conestoga wagons braving the mountainous traverse, tackling dirt, rock, gravel, and overgrowth, took 23 days to close the gap between the east and the west under the most ideal, dry-road conditions. Something had to be done.

Waterway travel, providing faster, obstacle-free transport by canal boats, demonstrated a marked improvement in speed, ease, and comfort, but the method's integral element-the canals themselves-were hardly in abundance, and never in the desired locations. The solution, therefore, remained to dredge them, resulting in the optimum length and direction.

During the mid-1820s, New York State did just that, creating the Erie Canal, and, by 1825, it exerted four effects:

1). It facilitated passenger and freight transport.

2). It reduced travel times.

3). It sparked an increase in trade, by means of its new route.

4). It caused a corresponding reduction in the traditionally strong trade associated with Philadelphia, as it was rerouted to western markets via the Erie Canal.

Transportation viability clearly signaled a lifeline, like an artery pumping blood, to a city, and lack of it caused it to die.

Alarmingly awakened by this reality, the Pennsylvania Legislature authorized the Mainline of Public Works to commence construction of a trans-Pennsylvania water artery, running in an easterly-westerly direction and designated the "Main Line Canal," to connect its two major cities. But the 36.65-mile stretch through the Allegheny Mountains, needed to close the gap between either end, proved an engineering obstacle.

An initially envisioned solution--a four-mile tunnel through the base of the mountain--was costly, and experience was considered inadequate to even attempt it. Questions concerning a tunnel-contained waterway also arose. While its vision was advanced, technology was not.

Inspired by a hybrid, intermodal British transportation system, it ultimately decided to design its own combination network to link the Hollidaysburg Canal Basin in the east with the Johnstown one in the west by means of ten, mountain-negotiating, inclined planes and constant-elevation canals to serve as the full Main Line Canal's core of connection. It was designated the "Allegheny Portage Railroad."

Coupled with the already elaborate, state-owned canal system, which encompassed aqueducts, tunnels, reservoirs, dams, 82 miles of railroad track, and 276 miles of waterway, it would dramatically reduce the journey time of passengers and goods and restore the trade lost to the competitive Erie Canal.

The three-year construction project, completed on March 18, 1834, entailed the first rail tunnel, named Staple Bend and routed through the ridge at the top of inclined plane number one, reducing, by 2.5 miles, the distance the track would otherwise have had to cover if it had adhered to the valley's natural route, while the plane itself was 1,608 feet long and had a corresponding, 150-foot elevation gain.

Project costs included .5 million for the public works system and .8 million for the railroad.

"Portage," defined as "overland transport between bodies of water," became the missing link in the waterway stretching almost 400 miles between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

Although feasible and technologically successful, the water-and-rail, multiple-elevation system offered slow passage. Passengers and cargo, originating in the east and traversing the Main Line Canal in boats, were transferred from the Hollidaysburg Basin to rail cars, which were horse-drawn to the first grade. Hitched to a continuous cable, which moved over rollers between the rails, they were hoisted up the incline at a four-mph speed, propelled by one of two stationary, 35-hp steam engines installed below the engine shed's floor at the top of the incline, often in conjunction with descending cars to achieve a counterbalance between the two. The second steam engine served as a backup.

Descent speeds, aided by gravity, were minimized by pulley-installed water brakes.

As many as six hourly trains could surmount the inclined plane.

Of the ten of them, the number three was the shortest, at 1,480 feet and with a corresponding 131-foot elevation gain, while the number eight was the longest, at 3,117 and 308 feet, respectively.

Threading their way through the Allegheny Portage Railroad's 36.65-mile mountainous section, canal boats climbed 1,398 feet and descended 1,172 feet, before being refloated in the Johnstown Basin for the western portion of the Main Line Canal journey to Pittsburgh.

Several improvements, incorporating advancing technology, were progressively introduced.

Traditional, early locomotives lacked sufficient power to propel the freight-laden rail cars up the inclines, necessitating the stationary steam engines instead. But, a year after the Allegheny Portage Railroad had become operational, the horses were replaced by locomotives for level propulsion. The first, the "Boston," performed the equivalent work of 18 horses, and 16 others subsequently joined the fleet.

The "intermodal" nature of the operation took on new meaning when sectional packet boats, each weighing about 7,000 pounds, were introduced, splitting, like huge cargo containers, and floating on to the incline plane-ascending railroad cars in either the Hollidaysburg or Johnstown basins, three hitched to the continuous cable at a time in the lower shed. The tri-section arrangement, fitted with a spring-loaded friction brake behind it to preclude runaway conditions, greatly reduced the inconvenience and transfer times inherent in the initial, repacking method, and facilitated continuous, cohesive transport from origin to destination, regardless of the water or rail mode intermittently negotiated.

The 3.5-inch hemp rope originally used for towing, subjected to persistent wear and breaking, was replaced by a stronger line made of wire.

Indeed, by 1840, the previous overland, trans-Pennsylvania journey had been reduced from 23 days to just four.

The pace of technology, soon proving itself faster than the railroad, ultimately outran it and led to its demise, as ever-more powerful locomotives and advanced, topography-taming construction techniques facilitated more comfortable, rapid, continuous-track competition, which avoided the slower interchange system.

Attempting to plug the gap-of inefficiency-between the Hollidaysburg and Johnstown Canal basins, the state of Pennsylvania began to replace the inclined plane with continuous, bed-bound track routed through a Gallitzin-proximity tunnel, designated the "New Portage Railroad," thus relegating the original system and concept, in name, to the "Old Portage Railroad."

Victim, itself, to technologically-outpacing competition, it was purchased on June 15, 1857 for .5 million by the Pennsylvania Railroad after legislature had approved the sale of its Public Works Main Line Canal, and was incorporated into its own track network. Having completed its all-rail link between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh by means of the new Horseshoe Curve and Gallitzin tunnels on February 15, it progressively siphoned off business from the slower, less-convenient, and now-antiquated system, which operated at a loss. And, after two decades, it was discontinued-a relatively short span of time, but a long one for advancement-and dismantled.

The Allegheny Portage Railroad's success could be argued. Employing then-current technology, it was innovative for its time and based upon contemporary engineering techniques to surmount the topographical obstacles lying between the state's two major cities. Although it failed to capture the envisioned western markets, it significantly decreased travel times, offered increased comfort, facilitated trade between the coal-producing towns in the west and the larger cities in the east, fostered westward population expansion, rekindled business temporarily lost to the Erie Canal route, provided a living laboratory for emerging transportation technologies, and aided Pennsylvania in its development as an industrial state characterized by coal, iron, steel, and rail.

A small slice of this once-innovative, intermodal, mountain-hurdling transportation system can be experienced at the Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site.

Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site:

Like all of the country's national historic landmarks, that of the Allegheny Portage Railroad is a preserved pocket of history, located in present time and not between the covers of a book. When it had served its purpose, it was tucked into the annals of memory, having served as one of the steps man needed to climb during his earthly ascent.

Its Visitor Center, featuring artifacts, exhibits, and the appropriately-named "Allegheny Portage Railroad" film, displays a full-size locomotive model of the "Lafayette," built by engineer Joseph York and having previously appeared at the Baltimore and Ohio Exhibit in Chicago in 1893 and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis in 1904.

Adapted, in 1832, from Edward Bury's British locomotive design, the 29,630-pound "Lafayette," with a 12.5-inch cylinder diameter, 20-inch stroke, and 13-inch stack diameter, had a 4-2-0-wheel configuration and was ideally suited to the Allegheny Portage Railroad. By 1840, the type pulled almost two-thirds of all US trains.

A boardwalk leads from the Visitor Center to inclined plane number six through a chipmunk-inhabited forest and a stone quarry. Although no bonafide pit was ever found, archaeologists uncovered both abundant broken stone and stone-cutting needed for the railroad's culverts, bridges, viaducts, engine house foundations, and stone sleepers. Holes created by hand-held drills ensured that the break in the stone would be straight.

The boardwalk terminates at the inclined plane, which was 2,713 feet long and had a corresponding, 267-foot elevation gain, resulting in a 9.7-percent grade. A reconstruction, it features the hill-ascending tracks, whose ropes were supported by idler pulleys installed at 24-foot intervals, leading to the mountain's summit and therefore served as either the last plane during ascent or the first one during descent, depending upon the direction of travel.

At the foot of the incline, a "hitcher" appendaged the westbound rail cars to the main rope while a second one disconnected them at the top in the engine house, after the short climb, allowing them to be horse-pulled across the summit level. The plane's hemp rope was 2.23 inches thick here, although this had later been replaced with the wire type.

Despite the fact that the engine house exhibit itself is a reconstruction, it nevertheless serves to protect the original's foundation and represents one of ten such structures located along the intermodal rail line. With the exception of the boilers, most of the machinery used to raise and lower the trains was located below the ground level, the hauling rope itself just above the surface so that they could pass over it in the engine house.

The machinery itself included the weight pit, a two-cylinder steam engine located on either side of the drive sheaves, three brick-encased boilers originally installed on the engine house's side, and the sheaves, ropes, and gear, the latter of which actually pulled the train-connected rope. Fired boilers provided the two engines' steam.

Attendants hitched and unhitched the rail cars, tended the engines and their boilers, and lubricated the gear and the bearings.

Also within the building is a full-size steam engine model.

Cresson Summit marks the point where trains first crossed the Allegheny Portage Railroad in 1834.

The stone, two-story Lemon House, located along the level track, represents one of many such inns established because of the railroad in order to satisfy enroute passenger need for beverages, meals, and overnight accommodation.

Born in 1793 in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, Samuel Lemon himself purchased his first 268 acres of land in 1826, constructing a two-story log tavern east of the Allegheny mountains' summit on Northern Turnpike and succeeded it with the current stone structure in 1832. One of many entrepreneurs who had the foresight to anticipate passengers' needs and apply his business savvy to meet them, he also used the tavern and inn as his own home.

Subjected to several restorations, including south and east porch renovations, the removal of the garage, reinforced framing, front entrance restoration, and repointed exterior walls, the Lemon House, reopened in 1997, sports a furnished first floor, which represents its summer 1840 appearance.

Following the provided trail or the grassed incline in the opposite direction, today's visitor can access the Skew Arch Bridge. The only road bridge purposefully built for the Allegheny Portage Railroad, it was stipulated as "a stone bridge which will be required for the passage of the turnpike over the Rail Way on section number 36 for the Portage" by its original contract, although its specifications were modified in 1833 to facilitate a bend in the Huntington, Cambria, and Indiana Turnpike.

Rising to a 22.2-foot height and constructed of broken stone and stone sleepers from a section of the actual railroad--hand-laid in a diagonal pattern without mortar adhesion--it features arches whose imposts were offset and installed directly across form one another, producing, respectively, its 54.11- and 60.5-foot long north and south elevations. Contrary to its name, it does not have a tilted top.

The 901-foot-long Staple Bend Tunnel, also within the park and created by Irish and Welsh workers between 1831 and 1833, is the country's oldest such railroad tunnel, and was used until 1854, when the Pennsylvania Railroad routed its track elsewhere. Today, it invites hikers through its detailed stonework entrance and features sandstone arched lines.

The Railroad Sights of Gallitzin, Pennsylvania

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Riding the Rails in Rockhill Furnace, Pennsylvania

!±8± Riding the Rails in Rockhill Furnace, Pennsylvania

Tucked into the pocket of a pair of hundred-year-old railroad engineer coveralls, you are instantly returned to an era of vintage rail transportation here. Like triumphantly raised arms, two silver smokestacks proclaim their victory over time, which otherwise seems suspended by the sprawling, wooden, red-painted shop complex surrounding it, modified by not a single nail since it first rose from the ground. A cobweb of tracks, imbedded in the artery which divides the twin boroughs of Rockhill Furnace and Orbisonia, merges into three in front of the depot, which bears the latter's name, departure point for one of three daily, narrow-gauge, steam locomotive-pulled trains operating as the East Broad Top Railroad. The clang of a bell, rung across the street, indicates the arrival of a bright red trolley car from the opposite direction.

Tourists ride the rails today; coal miners rode them yesterday.

Cradled by Blacklog Mountain and both Saddleback and Sandy Ridges, the area, then undeveloped, beckoned prospectors with its natural resources, consisting of agricultural land, water, timber, coal, and iron, the Blacklog Creek both feeding and leading them to what would become its twin boroughs.

Initially serving as a Native American campsite and hunting ground, as evidenced by archeological traces found at Sandy Ridge, the area first took root in 1754 when land was purchased from Six Nations, and the first road, mimicking the original Indian path and fostering westward expansion of settlers, was created 33 yeas later, stretching between Burnt Cabins in the south and Huntingdon in the north.

Bedford Furnace, the area's first village, evolved from a trading post in 1760. Providing both a sense of location and permanence, it attracted the first white settler, George Erwin, who established a trading post in a log cabin, shipping goods over narrow, wilderness-tunneling trails and exchanging them with travelers and Native Americans alike.

Placing the initial pin into the map, the Bedford Furnace Company established a charcoal furnace in order to be able to produce iron in 1785, sparking growth in the Juniata Valley and serving as the first of many to eventually characterize it.

Rockhill Furnace Number 1, built in 1831 by Thomas Diven and William Morrison south of the town in Blacklog Narrows, replaced the smaller, original plant, while Winchester Furnace, the third such ironworks, rose a few hundred yards away.

Abandoned in 1850 after a less-than-prosperous reign, it was joined seven years later by furnace Number 1 when area deforestation depleted the timber necessary for iron smelting charcoal, although the Civil War once again-albeit temporarily-re-lit its fires.

A mortgage foreclosure preceded its purchase in 1867, but its resurrection now hinged upon a fuel source to feed it. The needed pot of gold at the end of the rainbow-or, in this case, on top of the rainbow-came in the form of coal discovered on Broad Top Mountain. What was now required was a method to transport it from its summit-located mines to the iron furnaces in the east.

East Broad Top Railroad:

During the early-1850s, Pennsylvania's Juniata Valley began to sprout rails.

The single track of Pennsylvania Central Railways, thread through the narrow mountain passes and along the Juniata River, connected Lewistown and Huntingdon, for the first time offering a non-aquatic, intrastate transportation alternative to the Public Work's Main Line Canal. The Pennsylvania Railroad's own all-rail line soon grew branches throughout the Allegheny Mountains, allowing it to penetrate hills and valleys in order to collect and haul the region's riches in the form of lumber and coal. Track laid between 1853 and 1854 enabled the Huntingdon and Broad Top Railway to surmount its very namesaked incline on the west side. But rail access remained a void on its east.

Although the necessary charter for such a rail line had been granted on April 16, 1856, several proposals-and 14 years-ensued before a group of Philadelphia businessmen, spurred by the Civil War's cry for additional track to move troops and supplies, collected the required capital to construct one, forming, with the aid of the still-born charter, the East Broad Top Railroad and Coal Company on July 3, 1871. It was decided, from the outset, to employ three-foot, narrow gauge track in order to reduce construction and operating costs and facilitate tighter turns.

The first track was put to bed on September 16 of the following year and its first locomotive, a 17.5-ton, wood-burning, narrow-gauge 2-6-0 built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia and named the "Edward Roberts," was delivered a year after that.

Like a journey of time, track-laying could be measured by the calendar, the first 11 miles of it reaching Rockhill Furnace on August 30, 1873, ascending Sideling and Wrays Hills before arriving in Robertsdale the following year-all for the purpose of transporting coal and forestry products from Broad Top Mountain to Mount Union, its southern terminus, for transfer to standard-gauge Pennsylvania Railroad trains.

The original village of Rockhill Furnace, taking shape round the iron furnaces a half-mile from the current depot on the banks of Blacklog Creek, progressively expanded.

The fleet equally multiplied when three 26-ton Baldwin Consolidation engines were acquired between late-1873 and early-1874, the same year that the Robertsdale-mined coal was first rail-transported to Rockhill Furnace to fuel the blast furnaces now taken over by the newly-formed Rockhill Iron and Coal Company to ultimately produce pig iron.

As a town, Rockhill Furnace took initial form as a dual-stack iron furnace and collection of coke ovens, which expanded into the East Broad Top Railroad shop complex lining the Jordan Creek-a veritable pocket of self-sufficiency.

Occupying the farmland purchased for the complex and employing the original, still-existent stone farmhouse for its administrative offices, the soon-sprawling plant's gears were turned by means of its steam-powered overhead shafts and belts, with additional electricity and compressed air generated by its boiler plant, pumping current, like flowing blood, to its foundry and machine, car, and blacksmith shops. Its brick roundhouse, eventually encompassing eight stalls, facilitated alignment with the needed track, provided light locomotive maintenance, and served as a storage shed, while heavy repairs occurred in the machine shop. Commodities necessary for steam engine operation, including water, coal, and sand, were stored throughout the complex, which itself was capable of the locomotive repair and maintenance functions themselves, as well as rolling stock manufacture and the production of forgings, castings, and machine parts for both the railroad and the mines it accessed.

The yard's wye, formed by track from Mount Union and crossing Meadow Street (Pennsylvania Route 994) just past the Orbisonia depot, facilitated intra-complex car movement, storage positioning, and train configuration, providing access to either Alvan or the Shade Gap Branch, depending upon car orientation.

Indeed, the shop complex served as one of many links in a chain, none of which could have existed without the other, inclusive of the area's natural resources giving rise to the iron smelting industry, the railroad needed to transport the coal to fuel it, the shops to manufacture and maintain its equipment, and the town arising to support the workforce which turned its gears.

Its fleet initially encompassed two passenger coaches, two baggage cars, and 176 freight and coal hopper cars.

From the mainline, which extended from Robertsdale to Woodvale in 1891 and Alvan in 1916, spur tracks spread like arteries from a central vein as additional mines were bored, resulting in the Shade Gap, Shade Valley, Booher Mine, Rocky Ridge, Number 7 and Number 8, Coles Valley, and NARCO branches, and the Shirleysburg clay spur.

With progressive expansion and prosperity, the East Broad Top Railroad began to carry passengers over and above the standard miners, coal, and freight for whom and for which it had been conceived.

The beginning of the 20th century signaled the railroad's infrastructure modernization program. Iron rails, for example, were replaced by steel ones. Wood was equally swapped for steel on trestles and bridges, and the durable metal for the first time formed its freight cars.

In 1926, coal-in addition to iron ore, quartzite ganister rock, forest products, and other miscellany-constituted 80 percent of its freight, exceeding 26 million ton-miles alone.

According to East Broad Top Railroad Timetable Number 53, effective Monday, September 29, 1930, it covered the 33-mile main line route from Mount Union to Alvan in one hour, 45 minutes, one southbound run departing at 0920 and arriving at 1105 via Allenton, Adams, Aughwick, Pump Station, Shirleysburg, Orbisonia, Pogue, Three Springs, Saltillo, Fairview, Kimmel, Coles, Rocky Ridge, Wrays Hill, Cooks, Robertsdale, and Woodvale.

Like everything in life, however, the railroad experienced both peaks and troughs. When the depression sunk its teeth into its profits, it was reorganized, simply, as the Rockhill Coal Company, and J. William Wetter assumed the presidency of both the iron furnace and the railroad which fed it.

Exerting its demands for commodities, however, World War II temporarily re-lit the fires in its furnaces, and strip-mining joined its list of coal and ganister rock extractions for the first time.

Inevitably, with the iron supply dwindling and coal the only commodity left to haul, the end of the line-literally-loomed ahead. Passenger rail services from Mount Union to Woodvale, initially curtailed from the two daily, Monday-to-Saturday round-trips, to a single one, were altogether discontinued on August 15, 1954, leaving coal as its sole, and increasingly unprofitable, type of freight. Mount Union brick plants, converting from coal to natural gas, no longer needed it for their own viability, while the proliferation of rail-replacing roads hammered the final anvil into the line. Mail, now transferred to truck transport, obviated the need for the post office contract.

The Rockhill Coal Company terminated its coal shipment requirements on March 31 and the East Broad Top Railroad's raison d'être essentially ended.

The last service, a round-trip from Rockhill Furnace to Mount Union via Saltillo and operated by 161,000-pound locomotive Number 17-a Baldwin 2-8-2 built in 1918-occurred on April 6, 1956, while all common carrier operations mimicked the event a little less than a month later, on May 1.

Stretching throughout the area, from Mount Union and climbing Broad Top Mountain on its east side, its mainline track network, along with its numerous, initially-intact branch lines, appeared like the cobwebs clinging to once-useful pieces of history, but now relegated to relics, their only associated movement, albeit in painstakingly slow form, being the weeds and grasses which sprouted between their cross-ties until they camouflaged them.

Not far behind was a second onslaught-in the form of the Kovalchick Salvage Company of Indiana, Pennsylvania--which had purchased the entire system, including its locomotives, cars, stations, shops, buildings, company houses, rights-of-way, and the land from which the once-precious coal commodity had been removed.

Four years passed. A few branch lines were uprooted. A handful of cars was sold to rail fans who insisted on owning a tangible piece of history. The weeds continued to aggressively attack and conquer the tracks. But, strangely, the dismantling company did not.

Indeed, instead of eradicating this piece of narrow gauge, steam railroad and coal mining history from the stage where it had been enacted, Nick Kovalchick, president of his company, became preservationist of it, rising from salvager to savior.

The East Broad Top Railroad's first re-purposed spark was lit by Orbisonia's one-week bicentennial celebration, whose cornerstone was the very rail line which had given birth to it, perhaps reflecting an act of creation, in which nothing truly dies.

Replacing tourists with coal, the trains would once again ply the tracks, offering return-to-history excursions. Cleared of underbrush, and given the necessary repairs, they once again supported railroad life when locomotive Number 12, a 1911 2-8-2 Baldwin, was christened with ginger ale by Kovalchick's daughter, Millie, on August 13, 1960.

Pulling two converted, open-air and four passenger coaches over the hitherto 3.5 miles of resurrected rail, it chugged, belched, and hissed black smoke and white steam, returning to the natural element for which it had been designed, as far as Colgate Grove. Because a wye had not been remedially installed until later, locomotive Number 15, having followed the proud, narrow gauge chain, pulled it back to the Orbisonia station.

Instead of departing history, the railroad, now under command of new president, Nick Kovalchick, has been returning to it ever since.

Designated a Registered National Historic Landmark by the United States Department of Interior in 1964, it is both the oldest-and oldest still-operating-narrow gauge railroad east of the Rocky Mountains, and today ranks as one of the "top tucks" into the preserved pockets of narrow gauge steam railroad history.

Tourists and locals alike retrace the bicentennial path, now stretching five miles, on one of three round-trip weekend excursion trains during May, June, and September; on Thursday-to-Sunday frequencies from July to mid-August; and during three-day, Friday-to-Sunday periods in October, covering the ten miles during 70-minute runs, ten minutes of which constitute a pause in Colgate Grove. Special and theme trains are offered on Mother's Day, Independence Day (accompanied by appropriate fireworks), Civil War weekends, on Labor Day, during the fall foliage season, on Halloween, and on Polar Express trips in December. Children-applicable trains are pulled by Thomas the Tank engines.

Although some 25 different steam locomotives plied the East Broad Top Railroad's tracks throughout its history, eight-comprised of six narrow gauge 2-8-2s and two standard gauge 0-6-0s-remain today, one of which is stored at the Whitewater Valley Railroad in Indiana. Most of the others continue to occupy their original residences-the roundhouse in the Rockhill Furnace shop complex.

The Number 3, a Baldwin standard gauge 0-6-0 built in 1923, was restricted to operations in the Mount Union switching yard and at the coal cleaning plant. The last and most powerful of the type, it was retired in April of 1956 and is stored in the Mount Union engine house.

The Number 12, a Baldwin 2-8-2 constructed in 1911, was contrastively the first and smallest Mikado to have been acquired, capable of hauling up to 15 loaded hopper cars from the coals mines. It was last used in 2000.

Of the same class as its Number 12 predecessor, the Number 14, built in 1912, was the second narrow gauge locomotive to be acquired, featuring both increased weight and power.

Still greater capability was offered by the Number 15, constructed in 1914, to satisfy increasing demand, enabling it to pull up to 18 loaded hopper cars.

The first of three large Mikados, the Number 16 of 1916, introduced superheaters, piston valves, and a Southern gear valve. It was retired a year before the original East Broad Top Railroad discontinued service, in 1955.

The succeeding Number 17 became the only heavy Mikado to be provisioned for tourist train service, while the number 18, the last and largest in the fleet, was retired in 1956. Like the other two in its class, it could pull 22 loaded hopper cars.

Several passenger cars, all coated in dark green, also encompass its fleet.

Of the coaches the railroad purchased from the Boston, Revere Beach, and Lynn, and the Air Sable and Northwestern, a single coach, two combinations, and the president's car remained after the others were sold at the conclusion of the line's passenger service. Six freight cars were converted to this configuration to enable it to write its tourist train chapter.

Coach Number 8, for instance, hails from 1882 and was constructed by the Laconia Car Company before having been acquired by Boston, Revere Beach, and Lynn in 1916.

Combine cars 14 and 15 share the same lineage.

Parlor car 20, now serving as the East Broad Top's first class coach usually appendaged to the end of the train, had been constructed in 1882 by Billmeyer and Smalls and was subsequently acquired from Big Level and Kinzua in September of 1907 for use as Railroad President Robert Seibert's personal coach.

Several other types make up the fleet, including flat, box, baggage, freight, and track cars, motorcars, cabooses, and diesel locomotives.

Today's tourist trains continue to depart from the "Orbisonia" station, a wooden, two-story, clapboard depot located on the north side of Meadow Street, just beyond the crossing point from the shop complex. It served as the railroad's operating headquarters after it moved from its initial, Marble House residence on a ridge behind the shop buildings. According to Vagel Keller, of the Friends of East Broad Top-a 501.c.3 historical and preservation society-"the current Orbisonia station (is) located in the borough of Rockhill Furnace, while the namesake is one-forth of a mile east... The station at this place was originally known as 'Rockhill,' and in 1888 the village got a post office called 'Rockhill Furnace.' Apparently, this caused misrouting of mail intended for an older post office in Pennsylvania named 'Rockhill,' and at about the same time that the current station was being built in 1906, the US Postal Service asked the East Broad Top to rename the station to avoid confusion... Paradoxically, the re-named 'Orbisonia Station' hosted the Rockhill Furnace post office until shortly after the end of common carrier operations."

During its heyday, its waiting room was alive with train crews, clerks, and passengers. Today, it serves as a gift shop still sporting its original wire ticket window, and from here passengers file through the door to a wooden, boardwalk-type porch, serving as a "platform," to await the train beneath the later-added, full-length trackside canopy.

The actual journey, in a choice of open, coach, or first class cars, plies the original, three-foot-wide, narrow gauge track and passes Orbisonia, farms, and forests before pausing at Colgate Grove after negotiating the wye, location of the East Broad Top's Shirleysburg clay spur, whose track had been laid in 1918 and had stretched from the grove itself to the base of the fire clay quarry on Sandy Ridge. Short-lived, its rails were removed in 1927, and the current wye, employing part of its right-of-way and constructed in 1961, resolved the train turn-around obstacle encountered during the bicentennial celebration excursions.

Today's passengers can remain at the grove either during the two-hour interval until the next run or overnight, but, since it offers little more than a barbecue and a scatter of picnic tables, all food, drink, and gear must be self-provided.

The East Broad Top offers two educational, railroad era-immersive programs. The first, designated "Engineer for an Hour," allows the rider to step into the shoes of an engineer and fireman by riding in the cab of a steam locomotive during one of the regularly scheduled trips, operating the throttle, blowing the whistle, and shovel-replenishing the firebox with coal. The second, "High Iron University/Rail Camp," is a five-day program offered in conjunction with Altoona's Railroaders Memorial Museum, and provides an indepth look at operating a steam powered railroad.

Aside from the train trip, rides are also offered in speeder, M-3, and handcars.

Another immersive experience is a tour of the railroad's shop complex, which served as the heart of its operation. Seemingly immune to time's sweep, it appears exactly as it did a century ago. The silver smokestacks mark the location of the Babcock and Wilcox boilers, which provided the steam needed to run the belt-driven equipment, while the red-painted buildings consist of the blacksmith, car, machine, and carpentry shops, pattern house, foundry, and lumber shed.

According, again, to Vagel Keller, "Another persistent myth holds that the current shops and roundhouse were built to replace earlier structures destroyed by a fire in 1882...The fire myth is based on oral traditions that conflate a cyclonic windstorm in the fall of 1881, which blew down part of the roundhouse (surviving today as the four arched doorways on the eastern half of the present structure), and on a fire in the early 1900s, which destroyed the paint shop and adjacent boiler shop. The roundhouse you see today originated with the four eastern stalls in 1874, was expanded to six stalls by 1895, and to its present form after 1911. The current shop complex originated in 1882 after the superintendent of the railroad prevailed on the Board of Directors to authorize the purchase of machine tools. Like the roundhouse, the shops were expanded over the years, taking their present form by 1911."

Rockhill Trolley Museum:

Sharing the dual-gauge portion of the rails in the yard across from the East Broad Top depot, the Rockhill Trolley Museum, billing itself as "Pennsylvania's first operating" one, affords the visitor a second opportunity to sink himself into vintage transportation history, plying the track to cover distance while distancing himself from time.

Powered by 600 volts of direct current collected by a continuous, overhead copper wire by means of a sliding shoe positioned at the end of a pole, electric trolleys, like trains, run on tracks, each of their under-floor motors usually powering a pair of wheels. An electric motor-driven air compressor channels pressure to their brakes. Internally, conductors check tickets and collect fares.

Tracing their origins to horse-drawn cars, trolleys, in their earliest forms, were small, wooden, four-wheeled vehicles, providing inter-city transportation. Demand, paralleling metropolis growth, soon necessitated larger cars, later constructed of steel, for passenger, freight, and mail transport, and by 1918, the trolley transportation industry had become the country's fifth-largest. Pennsylvania alone was served by 116 such trolley lines, which covered more than 4,600 miles of track.

But, as cities stretched, like taffy, into suburbs and were increasingly accessed by roadways, need for this transportation system declined, leaving only Philadelphia and Pittsburgh to run their lines after 1960, when Johnstown became the last small urban area to cease using its own.

Because it offers an inexpensive, pollution-free alternative to inner-city transportation, some existing track and related system components have been restored, which could be considered a budding stage of resurgence, modern cars or light-rail vehicles once again crisscrossing streets, intermixed with individual car and bus traffic.

This important trolley history can be experienced at the Rockhill Trolley Museum, which thus offers a second, rail-based transportation focus to Rockhill Furnace. Established in 1960, it acquired its first trolley car, the "Johnstown" Number 311, from its namesaked city. Built by the Wason Manufacturing Company of Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1922, it initially served in Bangor, Maine, before being sold to the Johnstown Traction Company, with which it performed a similar role in the Flood City until it was retired 19 years later, on June 11. As the first such car to operate within any Pennsylvania trolley museum track network, it continues to do so more than four decades later.

It is now one of many in the collection emanating form such Pennsylvania cities as Johnstown itself, York, Harrisburg, Scranton, and Philadelphia, and is part of its larger fleet of 35 in-service and under-restoration city and suburban, interurban, rapid transit, and maintenance-of-way cars.

York Car Number 163 is one of them. Constructed in 1924 by the J. G. Brill Car Company of Philadelphia, and constituting the museum's most extensively restored example, the trolley was one of five with curved sides operated by York Railways. Subsequently used as a summer home positioned just north of the city on the Conewago Creek, before being thrust from its foundation by Hurricane Agnes in 1972, it was subsequently donated to the museum. Now a collection of hybrid parts, including wheels and motors from Japan, seats from Chicago, and cane coverings from China, it became the world's only-operable example from York after the equivalent of 17 years of volunteer restoration.

Oporto Car Number 172 is an example of a smaller, single-axle car. Built and used by the Sociedades do Transportes Colectivos do Porto, or S.T.C.P., in 1929, the extensively brake-equipped vehicle, comprised of air, hand, and dynamic systems, was well suited to the Portuguese hilly city.

Ship-transported across the Atlantic and then road-conveyed from Philadelphia on a highway trailer, it immediately operated tourist excursion runs at the museum. Carved wood trim, brass fittings, sliding end doors, storable windows in roof pockets, and a three-abreast configuration constitute its ornate interior features.

The ,539 New Jersey Transit PCC Car Number 6, first ordered in 1945 as part of a 40-strong fleet by the Twin City Rapid Transit Company from the St. Louis Car Company, connected Minneapolis with St. Paul two years later, operating on the Interurban Line, for which it was ideally suited with its northern winter-combative galvanized steel body; significant, nine-foot width for interior volume; two-person conductor booths; and electric horns.

Its "PCC" designation, an abbreviation of "President's Conference Committee," stems from the fact that it was the result of the new trolley standards it created in an attempt to increase street car ridership, which had increasingly migrated to individual automobiles.

Car Number 6, one of 30 acquired by Newark, New Jersey-based Public Service Coordinated Transport in 1953 after the Minnesota system had substituted its own trolleys with diesel buses, plied the short, 4.5-mile, municipally-owned Newark City Subway. But the late-1990s signaled its own end when the trolley line was converted to a light rail one.

Having been the second of the last to operate over the network before it was withdrawn from service, it hibernated in storage for a decade until it was purchased by the Rockhill Trolley Museum in 2011.

Philadelphia Transportation Company Car Number 2743 is another product of the President's Conference Committee. Sporting a line of small, "standee windows" above the standard-sized ones, it offered increased acceleration and decreased interior noise levels over the older cars it replaced, operating with the Philadelphia Transportation Company from 1947 to 1993, a year after which it was acquired by the museum--although its five-foot, 2 1/4-inch wheel trucks had to be replaced with four-foot, 8 ½-inch ones before it could run on its tracks.

Capable of sustaining 70-mph speeds, and sporting contoured, bullet-shaped ends, Philadelphia and Western Railroad Car Number 205 is the "bullet car" in the collection. Manufactured by Brill in 1931, the aerodynamic-appearing vehicle employed lightweight aluminum, reducing structure weight, fostering increased speed, and requiring reduced power to propel, siphoning its electricity to run from a third rail and therefore not sporting the otherwise traditional trolley pole. Secondarily acquired by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority, or SEPTA, it provided 59 years of service before nudged into the museum's growing collection.

Its largest car is the "Independence Hall" Liberty liner. Spanning 156 feet in length, the permanently-attached, quad-car interurban, designed by the St. Louis Car Company in 1941, features eight, 125-hp articulated traction motors, and served the Chicago North Shore and Milwaukee Railroad's North Shore Line along with its identical twin, attaining 90-mph speeds on the windy city-Milwaukee sector. Both were designated "Electroliners."

Subsequently bought by the Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Company after the twin city link had been discontinued in 1963, the refurbished interurbans, named "Independence Hall" and "Valley Forge" Liberty Liners, entered service on its relatively short, 14-mile Norristown Line, for whose curves and hills it was less than optimal, although its passenger-popular tavern car sold alcoholic beverages, snacks, and meals during the trip.

Acquired by the Rockhill Trolley Museum after it was offered for sale in 1981, it appears similar, although for larger, then the only rapid transit car in its collection, Philadelphia Subway Number 1009.

Manufactured itself by the J. G. Brill Car Company in 1936, it saw initial deployment on the Delaware River Bridge Commission's Benjamin Franklin Bridge Line, shuttling passengers between Philadelphia and Camden. Its City of Brotherly Love service was retained with the Broad Street Subway, which subsequently purchased it and operated it until 1984, at which time it was replaced by state-of-the-art Japanese cars and donated to the museum.

Track-plying maintenance vehicles also take their place in the collection. Philadelphia and Western Railroad plow Number 10, for instance, a "sheer plow" produced by the Wason Manufacturing Company in 1915, canted snow to either side of the track. Bought from SEPTA in 1988, it is the last snowplow trolley to have been used by any US transit system, although it is employed by the museum for the same track-clearing purposes.

Actual car maintenance and restoration can be viewed on shop and car barn tours, while six departures offer trolley ride opportunities on the 1.5-mile Shade Gap Branch of the East Broad Top Railroad, with which it closely coordinates, to Blacklog Narrows, passing the remains of the original iron furnaces, which are now reduced to skeletal brick walls and coke oven ruins. A single ticket accesses unlimited rides for the day, which take about an hour for the three-mile round-trip. Like the East Broad Top Railroad itself, which the trolleys usually meet upon return, the Rockhill Trolley Museum, open on weekends between June and October, schedules several seasonal trips, including those highlighting trolley equipment, fall spectaculars, and Pumpkin Patch, Polar Bear Express, and Santa runs. Its gift shop features a rail-related photographic collection.

Riding the Rails in Rockhill Furnace, Pennsylvania

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