A Brief History Of The East Broad Top

THE EAST BROAD TOP RAILROAD was organized in 1871, under a charter issued in 1856, to build a narrow-gauge track between the Pennsylvania Railroad’s main line at Mount Union and a group of coal-mining communities some thirty miles to the south. The first section, from Mount Union to Rockhill Furnace, opened in August 1873, and the remainder of its main stem reached Robertsdale the following year. Several branches were added later. Such a small railroad had little impact on the national economy, but it was vitally important to the immediate area it served.

Many railroads in mountainous areas selected three-foot gauge, rather than the standard four feet eight and a half inches, believing that it would reduce their construction and operating costs. The choice usually turned out to be a mistake, both because the cost of moving a given traffic with smaller engines and cars tends to be greater, and because a change in gauge requires freight to be unloaded and transferred, instead of simply switching the cars to a different line. The EBT was not particularly affected by these considerations, however. Its traffic was largely coal and almost all its tonnage moved outbound, so freight cars were unloaded at transfer points anyway, to make the return trip empty. Passenger service, a minor part of the EBT’s operations, was strictly slow-speed and local in nature.

The EBT’s peak traffic year was 1926, when 25 million ton-miles of freight were moved, 80 percent of it coal. The line prospered through most of the 1930s despite the Depression, but it began to lose money in 1946. As demand for coal declined in the postwar era, the EBT’s 5 fortunes sank as well. Operations were greatly reduced by 1953, and passenger service ended the following August. Most branches were abandoned by 1955; the final train ran on April 6, 1956. Less than a month later the Kovalchick Salvage Company of Indiana, Pennsylvania, acquired the property.