11 August 2010

East Broad Top Railroad to be
Part of 2010 Railfest

An EBT Mikado rests on the turntable track at
Rockhill Furnace.

Altoona Pennsylvania USA - Like an old two-man, pump-action handcar, the Railroaders Memorial Museum and East Broad Top Railroad will work together for this year's Railfest 2 and 3 Oct 2010.
 
Visitors who book an excursion ticket at the East Broad Top Railroad in Orbisonia will get free admission to the museum and Horseshoe Curve that weekend.
 
Conversely, holders of a 2010 annual museum membership will get a ride on the EBT's narrow-gauge railroad that Sunday, as their free Railfest weekend excursion.
 
"We were looking to start doing some different things for Railfest," wrote Larry Salone who directs operations at both locations under separate contracts in an e-mail to the Mirror. "[Railfest] was getting a little stale."
 
This year is also the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the East Broad Top as an excursion railroad. The Kovalchick family of Indiana had purchased the operation to scrap it, after it had stopped commercial runs in 1956, according to Salone.
 
Since then, historians have recognized the East Broad Top, with its 33 miles of line, complex of shops, 100-year-old station, seven steam, three diesel locomotives, 200 cars, several coaches, and seasonal excursion business as a resource of exceptional worth.
 
"It's a cultural time capsule," because so much of the original context remains, said Lawrence Biemiller in The Chronicle of Higher Education Journal, quoting Bill Withuhn, Smithsonian Institution transportation history curator.
 
The "reciprocal" effort for Railfest between the museum and narrow-gauge railroad actually began last year in the form of bus service from Orbisonia to Altoona, 58 miles away, said Lee Rainey, vice president of the Friends of the East Broad Top.
 
"It appears this year they're taking that very successful start and pushing the range a bit further," he said.
 
It makes sense for the two venues to work the levers together, Rainey said.
 
"We're fortunate here in central Pennsylvania to have two premier railroad [sites] so close," he said. "Anything that lets visitors enjoy both on one trip is good."
 
Altoona, where the Pennsylvania Railroad set up its main shops, and the Horseshoe Curve, where the PRR overcame its most serious challenge to laying track to the west in the mid-19th century, and the East Broad Top, one of the best preserved examples of a narrow-gauge steam railroad, are both international attractions, Rainey said.
 
As a tour guide at the East Broad Top, he has shepherded visitors from Germany, Switzerland, and Great Britain since last year, he said.
 
Next year at Railfest, the museum shouldn't have a staleness problem, Salone wrote.
 
He expects a new roundhouse to be built in the yard by then, and workers will be assembling the historic and much-troubled K-4 steam engine inside, according to an ad the museum is planning to run.
 
"[But for now] we think it's a pretty neat idea to do some different things," he wrote.
 
William Kibler.