ROBERTSDALE, Pa. — While the Friends of the East Broad Top volunteers received lots of praise for over-the-top fundraising and aggressive track restoration at the group’s recent Fall Reunion, they’re pressing ahead with a dizzying array of other projects. All of it goes hand-in-hand with the EBT Foundation’s goal of restoring an entire 33-mile narrow-gauge railroad in the mountains of southern Pennsylvania.
The Friends group is the volunteer, public-membership counterpart to the Foundation, which in 2020 bought the former coal-hauling railroad – a National Historic Landmark – intending to restore and operate the line that operated as a seasonal steam tourist road from 1960 to 2011. Both are non-profits, the Friends having organized in 1982 when the railroad was still owned by the Kovalchick family.
With the Friends’ volunteer and financial support, the Foundation has reopened and expanded the railroad. [See “EBT reopens more track . . . , Trains News Wire, Oct. 8, 2024]. For the fall event, a special train headed by 2-8-2 Mikado engine No. 16 (Baldwin Locomotive works, 1916) carried 210 Friends members over a newly restored 1.3-mile stretch to Jordan Summit that had lain dormant since 1956. In 2024 alone, the group raised $160,000 to buy the track materials and ballast for that project.
“A lot of people have admitted to me that I wasn’t the only one who was teary-eyed when we went to Jordan Summit,” Friends President Andy Van Scyoc told Trains News Wire.
Since 2020, the Friends have raised more than $1 million [See “Friends of EBT reaches $1 million . . . ,” Trains News Wire, June 6, 2024] toward various elements of the railroad’s restoration, including rolling-stock repair, shop-building rehabilitation, and support of the EBT Archives and Special Collections project. For 2024, the group contributed 9,000 hours of labor and raised $361,000, which is $141,000 more than its goal of $220,000. For 2025, the Friends board set a goal of $270,000.
The group maintains a museum/library and the former EBT station at Robertsdale, about 20 miles south of the railroad’s operating headquarters of Rockhill Furnace, Pa. Robertsdale is the center of the former semi-bituminous coal-mining area, and Friends docents offer tours of mine ruins, and railbike and handcar rides on the EBT main line adjacent to those ruins. Ultimately, the Foundation wants to reopen the entire main line between Rockhill and Robertsdale.
Exhibition of Lerro paintings
Among the Friends’ most visible accomplishments at Robertsdale, highlighted at the Oct. 4-6 event, was the opening of a year-long art exhibition curated by Scarlett Wirt. Displayed in the Henry F. (Hank) Inman Memorial Exhibit Hall is a series of five Peter A. Lerro Jr. watercolors the group used to raise funds and keep enthusiasm up during the railroad’ 8½-year shutdown. From 2011 to 2020, when EBT’s future was hazy, volunteers continued to paint, reglaze, and restore buildings and rolling stock.
Titled “Not for Sale,” the exhibition reprises the slogan the Friends used to promote the series, offering prints for a donation only, not a fixed price. Each original portrays a scene along the EBT, largely incorporating Friends projects. The paintings are “Action at the Company Square, Robertsdale, Pennsylvania,” 2012; “A Beehive of Activity,” 2013; “Meet at Coles Tank,” 2014; “Late Afternoon at the Tipple,” 2015; and Keeping the Wheels Rolling,” 2016. In addition to the watercolors, the display includes preliminary sketches Lerro used in developing the final painting perspectives.
Paved path, longer rides
Another event at the reunion was the opening the first 300 feet of a planned 1-mile, hard-surface path to facilitate the walking tours of mine sites. Wayside interpretive panels — created by Bill Metzger, the retired designer known to Trains readers for his Maps of the Month — are also in final preparation. In addition, volunteers have cleared brush at the wye track in Robertsdale, expanding the area for walking tours.
Visitors also noted that one of the three steel hopper cars the Foundation trucked to the Robertsdale station for display has been repainted and stenciled with EBT markings. They provided a backdrop for railbike, handcar and speeder operation over newly extended track, which now reaches about 2 miles, almost to the town of Woodvale, the southern limit of Foundation ownership.
Overseen by Robertsdale coordinators Pete and Jane Clarke and other volunteers, the Friends museum is open every Saturday that the railroad is running in Rockhill Furnace.
On the March to Saltillo
Also included in the Friends’ fund-raising goals for 2025 is $75,000 to continue restoring the main line toward the town of Saltillo, a project that the Friends and the Foundation have dubbed the March to Saltillo. Besides track, the group plans to spend $50,000 to continue work to recreate the razed Saltillo depot. Friends member and architect John Bowie of Philadelphia has developed plans for the station, which will be nearly identical to the common-carrier-era structure. Construction is expected to begin in 2025. The group also plans to re-erect an enclosed water tank at Saltillo that was destroyed in a 1987 fire.
