The East Broad Top water tank at Coles Station

Half a mile east of Coles Valley Road, at milepost 24.3 on the East Broad Top main line beyond Saltillo toward Robertsdale, stands an enclosed water tank. The Historic American Engineering Record documented it as HAER PA-644, with ten photographs by A. Pierce Bounds in April 2006 and five measured drawings delineated by John R. Bowie; William A. Adams was on the field team, Henry F. Inman was historian, John Bowie Associates was the contractor, and the Friends of the East Broad Top, the Society for Industrial Archeology and the Amherst Railway Society sponsored the work. The data pages are a single cover sheet listing photographs, reduced copies of the drawings and field records, and the Library of Congress notes that unprocessed field notes exist for the structure.

The Library of Congress summary calls the tank the sole surviving example of the enclosed water stations that once stood along the EBT main line and branches, and says such tanks were typically heated with small stoves so the water for steam locomotives would not freeze in winter. The photograph index describes a wood tank bound with iron compression bands, carried on heavy timber joists and a center beam above a concrete foundation, with a one story wood frame addition on the east side that covered a stone lined, gravity fed cistern and held a pump, since removed, that lifted water up into the tank. The main line runs beside the foundation with a passing siding beyond it. In railroad parlance, the index notes, Orbisonia is railroad north and Robertsdale railroad south.

A 1991 National Park Service inventory of the county's historic engineering and industrial sites places the Coles tank house at Coles Summit, between the two railroad tunnels near the former junction of the main line and the Coles Valley branch, and says its water came from a spring on the mountainside behind the tank. The Library of Congress record and the inventory disagree on when it was built. The National Register nomination for the railroad noted that the Coles station house and tankhouse still stood, and that the Coles Valley spur was one of three the EBT ran out to strip mines, with Shade Gap and Rocky Ridge.

Checked 2026-09-05 · Library of Congress survey record, read in full

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