Huntingdon Built Railcars — Huntingdon County Information Page

Did you know? Huntingdon once built railroad cars, and the best part of the story is that the works had already failed once.

In 1872 Orbison and Welch opened the Huntingdon Car Works at the northwest edge of the borough, turning out two or three freight cars a day. They bought their wheels from somewhere else. After about two years, operations were suspended. The place went quiet.

Then in July of 1880 two brothers, J. G. and M. C. Blain, bought the dead plant. They enlarged it to four times its old capacity and built their own foundries so they could finally cast their own car wheels, which is how it became the Car and Car Wheel Works.

By the time the county history was written it covered ten acres and ran on a two hundred and fifty horsepower steam engine. Four hundred men worked there. The payroll was fourteen thousand dollars a month. They went through ten thousand tons of iron and ten million feet of lumber a year, cut at their own mills in this county and dried on the property.

Two brothers bought a shut down factory and turned it into the biggest employer in town.

What the fact check changed. Africa 1883 gives the whole arc: 'In 1872, W. A. Orbison and C. W. Welch, under the firm-name of Orbison & Welch, established... the Huntingdon Car-Works... at the end of which time operations were suspended.' Then: 'In July of 1880, J. G. and M. C. Blain, under the firm-name of Blain Brothers, purchased the establishment, which they enlarged to four times its previous capacity, and added an extensive foundry for casting car-wheels... hence the change in the name of the works.' So Blain Brothers Car and Car Wheel Works in the 1880s is correct. ONE CLAIM REMOVED: 'Proof of it sits in Washington today, in the Smithsonian's collection of American business history.' the check could not source that at all, and it is the kind of specific institutional claim a reader can check in thirty seconds. Dropped rather than hedged. The rewrite uses what the original missed entirely: the works had already failed and been shut down before the Blains bought it and made it the town's biggest employer. That is the actual story and it is far better than the one that was queued.

Sources

History of Huntingdon and Blair Counties, Pennsylvania, J. Simpson Africa / Louis H. Everts (1883)

Checked 2026-07-29 · County history, independently fact checked

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