East Broad Top Railroad

The East Broad Top Railroad's shops stand on Meadow Street in Rockhill Furnace, a middle point on a three-foot-gauge line that ran from Mount Union to Alvan. The nomination calls the railroad one of the oldest narrow gauge lines in America, and a 1991 National Park Service inventory of the county's industrial sites records that it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964.

The nomination says the East Broad Top Railroad and Coal Company was established in 1871, after the Civil War interfered with an earlier plan to reach the Broad Top coal. Africa's 1883 county history says the company had been organized under an act approved April 16, 1856, that construction began on September 16, 1872, and that the road opened to Robertsdale, its southern terminus, on November 4, 1874. The 1991 inventory says the owners of Rockhill Furnace built the line to reach iron ore and coal in the region, and that it reached its greatest length in 1916 with the extension to Alvan. The road carried timber, sand, rock, general freight and passengers, but coal was its great money-maker: trains hauled it to Mount Union, where it was transferred to the Pennsylvania Railroad. In 1881, Africa records, the road carried 143,449 tons of bituminous coal.

After World War II other fuels began to supplant coal. Passenger service ended in 1953, and on April 16, 1956, the company ran its last train. The purchaser of the entire line preserved five miles of track and six steam locomotives, Mikado types built for the East Broad Top by the Baldwin works of Philadelphia, and began running part of the line as a tourist attraction in 1960. The 1991 inventory names the buyer as the Kovalchick Salvage Company of Indiana, Pennsylvania, and says the town of Orbisonia asked for the reopening to commemorate its bicentennial.

The bulk of the Rockhill yard dates from 1874, including the red brick roundhouse with berths for eight engines and the Armstrong turntable. When the form was written in 1974 the blacksmith shop, foundry and machine and car shops still housed their original machinery, and the foundry was filled with patterns used in making the rolling stock. About 1,400 feet of grade north of Shirleysburg washed out in 1972. Across Meadow Street, the Orbisonia passenger station had its waiting room converted into a gift shop and its freight room into a snack bar.

Decline in the use of coal after World War II forced the East Broad Top to cease operations in 1956. All of its track and rolling stock seemed doomed, but the purchaser of the line generously preserved five miles of the track and six of the steam engines.National Register of Historic Places nomination, East Broad Top Railroad (reference 66000666), 66000666, p. 3 · character 7,078 of the scanned text

Checked 2026-09-05 · National Register of Historic Places nomination, read in full

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