Mount Union Timber Transfer

At Mount Union the three foot, narrow gauge East Broad Top Railroad met the standard gauge Pennsylvania Railroad, and freight had to be transferred from one to the other.

In the 1930s the gasoline powered motor truck cut into the East Broad Top's non-mineral traffic. In 1933 the railroad put in what was known as the "timber transfer," to lift standard gauge cars off their wheel trucks and replace those trucks with narrow gauge ones for the ride on the East Broad Top. It was a crane that straddled two tracks in the Mount Union yard, and it had originally been operated by the McKelvey Brothers Lumber Company.

The Historic American Engineering Record's history of the railroad calls the method quite simple. One end of a standard gauge car was spotted under the crane and lifted, its truck was rolled out onto a side track, and a narrow gauge truck was wheeled in to replace it. The car was lowered, and the same was done at the other end. The entire process took half an hour.

The narrow gauge coupler was 75 percent smaller than the standard gauge coupler and mounted lower, so the East Broad Top connected the cars with an S-shaped aluminum adaptor.

Checked 2026-10-30 · County histories and primary sources, read in full

← All stories from Mount Union borough

Have something to add to this story, or a photograph of it? Send it here →