MOUNT UNION, Pa. — East Broad Top Railroad’s last remaining standard-gauge 0-6-0 switcher, a 1923 Baldwin Locomotive Works engine, on Wednesday left the only place it has called home for 101 years aboard a specialized heavy-haul low-boy trailer.
The 68-ton locomotive is destined for display at a park in Red Bay, Ala., more than 800 miles from the dual-gauge yard where the 33-mile narrow gauge coal-hauling EBT met the Pennsylvania Railroad main line. Distinctively, the switcher and its tender were fitted with four couplers, two front and two aft, to enable it to shift both standard- and narrow-gauge cars without the use of idler cars.
Accompanied by state police and over-dimensional-warning escort cars, the engine left Mount Union. Its route took it alongside the EBT main line that parallels U.S. Route 522 into the twin boroughs of Orbisonia and Rockhill, the latter being the EBT’s headquarters. Prior to this, the only parts of No. 3 that had come to the road’s Rockhill shops were parts being renewed such as drivers being turned, arriving on narrow gauge freight cars. Being lighter and less tall, No. 3’s slopeback tender had made the trip to Alabama months earlier.
As reported by the Franklin County Times of Russellville, Ala., the locomotive was purchased by Bob Tiffin, who founded Tiffin Motorhomes of Red Bay, a custom builder of luxury recreational vehicles. Situated along a former Illinois Central line, the city of Red Bay and a local museum see the engine — along with a caboose and a water tank — as a centerpiece in a railroad park to honor the IC’s heritage in that town.
No. 3 wasn’t among the assets the Joseph Kovalchick family conveyed to the EBT Foundation, Inc., when the nonprofit was established in 2020 to preserve and restore most of the short line, which is a National Historic Landmark. When EBT closed out common-carrier operation in 1956, Kovalchick’s father Nick bought the property. In 1960 he reopened a 4-mile segment for seasonal steam tourist service, and the son took control when Nick died in 1977.
Foundation steps in
The Foundation acquired from Kovalchick about 27 miles of the main line, plus the headquarters and station, shops, roundhouse, six EBT Baldwin narrow gauge 2-8-2 Mikado locomotives – all built new for EBT between 1911 and 1920 – and dozens of historic passenger and freight cars.
More than a decade earlier, in 2009, a DuBois, Pa., businessman, Larry Salone, started another nonprofit with a similar aim, the East Broad Top Preservation Association, which also identifies itself as East Broad Top Railroad Preservation Association. EBTPA leased and operated the tourist-railroad portion of the property from 2009 to 2011, claiming that during that time it would accumulate enough funding to buy the entire property outright. Those plans didn’t come to pass.
At the end of 2011, the owner and Salone did not renew the steam-tourist operating agreement, which effectively shut down all EBT rail activity.
After that, Salone proposed restoring the former EBT standard-gauge trackage to serve as a short-line terminal freight road. EBTPA purchased the northernmost 4 miles of the EBT line, including the dual-gauge Mount Union yard and a two-stall enginehouse that housed No. 3. (EBT in 1975 had sold its other standard-gauge 0-6-0 engine housed there, No. 6, a 1907 Baldwin, to Whitewater Valley Railroad in Indiana, where it operated but is now out of service.)
At the time, Salone promoted this transaction as being the cornerstone of a plan for EBTPA to acquire and restore the entire railroad, segment by segment. Ownership by a nonprofit was thought to be the key to unlocking state and federal grants that would fund the restoration.
Neither that idea nor the short-line proposal panned out, except that the standard-gauge track did serve as a temporary site for car storage and brake maintenance.
EBTPA also served as the local conduit for a state transportation grant that renewed about three blocks of Pennsylvania Avenue in Mount Union, using what was once the original 1850 PRR main-line right of way through the center of town. This project created a multimodal streetscape with space for sidewalks, new retaining walls, improved roadways for autos, and the railroad connection to Norfolk Southern’s Pittsburgh Line main line.
Since then, EBTPA has advertised for sale the engine and 10 narrow-gauge hopper cars left in the Mount Union yard, and has sold off part of the land for Dollar General and Stihl chainsaw retail stores. The EBT Foundation has the right to claim and remove other freight cars in Mount Union (and has moved some to its Rockhill Furnace site), and holds trackage rights if that ever becomes feasible. The locomotive sale price is unknown, but at one time a broker listed it for $300,000.
In the meantime, the threatened status of the railroad, with its intact collection of locomotives and rolling stock, circa-1900 machine shops, archives and other assets, prompted three railroad-industry leaders — Henry Posner, Wick Moorman and Bennett Levin — to establish the Foundation. Since 2020, that group has breathed new life into the railroad, sparking the revival that EBTPA had once proposed.
Text of IRS filing
Disposal of EBT assets appears to stand at sharp variance with the EBTPA’s Form 990 submission that Salone, as president, filed with the federal Internal Revenue Service. The 2023 version reads as follows:
“Continued rehabilitation and maintenance on the Mount Union, Pa., linear park and outdoor museum along the original EBT right of way, includes rehabilitation of track, the original block enginehouse and historic equipment to include 0-6-0 steam switcher engine, 10 diverse and hand made by the EBT coal hoppers for display, two side-dump cars, narrow and standard gauge made by the EBT. Restoration beginning on the coal tipple from the late 1800s, early 1900s, in downtown Mount Union. Beginning to clear the railroad line at the far south end from the Aughwick Bridge (one of the first concrete arch bridges in the U.S.), for visitors to see the bridge, and also to then allow for narrow gauge speeder rides to explore the right of way from the bridge north towards Mount Union Boro, stopping at the Riverview Business Park. Almost 2-3 miles of narrow gauge track and travel.”
What an utter travesty. This is going to go up there with the Grand Trunk Western 5629 as “lost opportunities”.
The actual EBT preservationists are making leaps and bounds to preserving the railroad and its historic fabric, meanwhile, this thing is being shipped off to somewhere it has no ties to and dressed up like a 1970s tourist attraction.
Shame on all involved.
I would prefer that locomotive to stay at its original home, however tis’ much better to be preserved than turned into scrap!!!!!!!
Salone is a very clever con artist.
What a shame that The real EBT Foundation was not able to control all of the original line. seeing that this outfit sold the locomotive and sold land for a couple of stores says to me that they were never really railroad preservationists.
Remember, there are those that believe that any track anywhere is nothing but a hiking/biking trail that hasn’t been finished yet. And they believe that that’s preservation!