ROCKHILL FURNACE, Pa. – Already powering past its current-year fund-raising goal, the volunteer Friends of the East Broad Top group has hit another milestone, announcing this week that since the historic East Broad Top Railroad was reopened in 2020, the group has raised $1 million in donations.
The 33-mile-long narrow gauge EBT, a National Historic Landmark in central Pennsylvania, was closed as a coal-hauling line in 1956, revived in part as a steam tourist railroad in 1960, and closed again in 2011. The EBT Foundation, Inc., was organized in 2020 to buy most of the property and preserve, restore and interpret the line, resuming passenger service in 2021 and reactivating one of its six steam locomotives in 2023.
Key to EBT’s success is its solid partnership with the Friends (both are non-profit groups), which provides volunteer labor and cash to support track restoration, rolling-stock renovation, stabilization of buildings in the road’s circa-1900 machine-shop complex, and an extensive archives program. The Friends also supplies docents and maintains and staffs a museum and depot 20 miles from here at Robertsdale, Pa., deep in the coal-mining country once served by the railroad.
EBT intends to restore its main line to that point, which involves two tunnels, a horseshoe curve, and 2% grades. Within the last year, the railroad took initial steps toward that goal, kicking into high gear work by both Foundation employees and the Friends’ track crew.
In each of the last four years, the Friends group has exceeded its fund-raising goal. For 2024, the goal set last fall was $220,000 and the sum now stands at $284,159, according to Karen Bulman, the organization’s fundraising treasurer. The Friends board decided to funnel all funds over the initial goal toward rebuilding the main line south, which has lain idle since 1956.
The Friends have labeled the initial goal of that project as the “March to Saltillo,” a town about 9 miles distant. There, the Friends have started preliminary architectural and engineering work on rebuilding a razed EBT station and water tank. Along the way are the communities of Pogue, site of EBT’s largest bridge, a 268-foot-long steel-truss span over Aughwick Creek, and Three Springs.
One of the three railroad-industry partners who organized the Foundation, Bennett Levin of Washington Crossing, Pa., hailed the $1 million milestone as just the latest evidence of the Friends’ longstanding commitment.
“Without the Friends, there would be no East Broad Top,” he told News Wire. “It would have disappeared a long time ago. Their goal is consistent with their historical ability to raise money — not only money but volunteer man-hours, especially before the Foundation was created.
“The Foundation is riding on the back of the Friends. The Friends kept it alive and invested an enormous amount of volunteer labor.”
Founded more than 40 years ago, the Friends supplied thousands of hours of volunteer labor over the years, even during the 2011-2020 shutdown, when the future of the property was unclear. With the blessing of then-owner (and now Foundation board member) Joe Kovalchick, FEBT crews continued to work at shoring up crumbling buildings, replacing broken windows, and preventing further deterioration.
“Having been around the block more than once, I have never seen a better or more focused group of people in railfanning than the Friends,” Levin said. “They are focused, they are organized, they’re committed. And the best part of this is that with regard to fund-raising, they absolutely complement us – what the Foundation can’t do itself because we‘re so focused on the big picture and we don’t have the infrastructure for, is ‘retail’ fundraising.
“We’re blessed to have a group of young people in Rockhill doing the day-to-day work, and a committed and significant board. But what we do is such a complicated transaction, [with] so many moving pieces and parts, [that] what the Friends do is the glue that keeps us together while we get up and running. What we do is significant because people see the progress, but what they do enables us to do what we do.
“We would never succeed without the Friends.”
The synergy between the two nonprofits is tangible in more than dollars. Since the 2020 reopening, Friends membership has almost tripled, from less than 800 to nearly 2,200.
In a release, Friends President Andy Van Scyoc noted: “We thank our FEBT members and donors whose exceptional generosity made it possible to achieve this financial milestone. Thanks also must go to the strong partnership . . . That collaboration has allowed the FEBT to use these funds effectively to support both the resurrection of an operating EBT and the preservation of its unique historic value.”
Of the $1 million raised, FEBT has spent more than $700,000 on preservation and restoration, with the remainder earmarked for projects in the wings.
The Friends list of the group’s most important projects include spending:
— $252,000 in Rockhill Furnace, the EBT’s historic operating headquarters, including money spent on stabilization efforts, new roofing, new doors, and structural repairs, to prepare the boiler and machine shops, the car shop, the carpenter shop, and a storehouse for public tours, and to ready the coal tipple for coaling the steam locomotives.
— $216,000 on the “March to Saltillo.” Already nearly a mile of track has been reconstructed, with additional ties and other material on hand to continue the work.
— $136,000 on the EBT Archives and Special Collections, a project to catalog, preserve, and digitize the railroad’s vast store of documents and artifacts. Thanks to Friends funding, an archivist, an archives technician, and several interns from Juniata College have processed thousands of documents, many of which are available to the public online.
— $96,000 on improvements at Robertsdale, where the organization operates a museum in the Old Post Office and the EBT station, in addition to offering tours of the mine ruins on foot and by rail bike.
The people involved with the EBT have really accomplished an amazing thing. Congrats to all their hard work.