East Broad Top RR Who knew?

Gasp!!!!  Never heard of the EBT?!  I'm shocked, shocked I say...   Oh well, don't worry - until our family moved to Pennsylvania many years ago I had never heard of it either. 

  I've been there several times but nothing recent.  The road went out on strike in 1956 and just never started up again. The railroad was rescued from oblivion by the scrap dealer who bought the line.  He decided to keep everything in place and run it as a tourist line although with an abbreviated main line.  Other than that he left everything in its place - engines, cars, backshops, stations, the works (this, by the way included ALL of the right of way and the tracks which are still in place). A couple of years ago the railroad was signed over to a preservation group who have backing, money, and talent and they have been doing fantastic things with railroad.  They have a facebook page which you can look at without being a member of facebook. 

  Over the years the only major change was the removal of the dual track car exchange yard in Mt. Union.  I remember seeing it complete in the 1970's but when I went back in the early 2000's all of the track save one rail line had been taken up.  However, the car storage area in Mt. Union still exists. It is overgrown and the cars have rusted and have trees growing through them. Not to worry though - they aren't the only EBT cars - there were plenty sitting on sidings around Orbisonia when the line quit running and a number of those have been beautifully restored to running condition.  

I hope in the next year or so to be able to go back and see the line again.

Here's a shot I took of one of the last runs back in 2010.  The railroad shut down for about 10 years but, as noted above, restoration work is ongoing and the road is running again.

News to me.

Great read.  Hopefully their plans will come to fruition.  

Interesting! Thanks for posting.

There seems to be somewhat of a pattern in the disposition of defunct railroad property for the smaller regional lines. As a real estate attorney, a few decades ago I briefly worked with a developer who had purchased the entire right of way of the former Baltimore and Annapolis Short Line after it went out of business.

Before I was involved, ground lease easements had been spun off the permit the development of the B & A hiker-biker path, part of the East Coast Greenway, but the reversionary rights to that ROW had been retained by the developer. As such, any time other developers wanted to cross the right of way to unify parcels on both sides and access the main roads paralleling the right of way, they needed to purchase those rights from the developer. My limited involvement was to prepare and file the paperwork for several of those easements, which afforded me a glimpse into the legal structure underpinning the original right of way, and gave me a new respect for the daunting task of assembling the original right of way.

Unfortunately, little of the infrastructure had survived, other than a few siding rails and, locally, the station in Severna Park, which now serves as the home of the Severna Park model railroad club, and their fine HO scale layout. I do also make use of the B & A Trail Park for biking, but can only imagine what the commuters and summer visitors would have experienced in years past on the same route.

First rode EBT back in the late-1960s; they used to run one or two weekend excursions out to a picnic ground ten miles or so out from Orbisonia. It was a good day, especially in the fall. 

EBT is a narrow-gauge operation, perhaps the last one operating east of the Mississippi. Is the loco MTH is planning an On30 or something similar? I'm guessing not...

Very interesting...I didn’t realize EBT rostered any standard gauge locomotives, but certainly would have been handy at the interchange(s). I’ll have to look around for some photos.