So what are the "unfortunate commonalities" that you see regarding the owner that make the future look bleak for the EBT? I agree that there needs to be investors for the EBT. The most obvious ones are Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Either that or entities like the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

The NPS was a candidate but then they were "forced" to take over steamtown, ending any chance for them.

Bob

Are you serious? I'd think that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have a lot better things to do than invest in the EBT. Do either of them live in PA or are originally from the area to give a crap about it?

I think the connection is that they are both known to like trains on some level. I believe that, in addition to making the business decision to buy BNSF, Buffet has a major private Lionel layout in Omaha, and the story goes that Gates has at least chartered private, mainline passenger trains, if not owned one. Can't confirm that one though. So, a somewhat tenuous connection to the idea they might be interested in preservation. I took a cruise once, but that doesn't mean I'm big on ships (although it would be a shame to lose either the Delta Queen or the SS United States).

If your preservation funding plan is contigent on hoping that someone like Warren Buffet or Bill Gates dumps a lot of cash, then you are doomed for failure. You might was well just wait for the Monopoly Man to drive up in his Monopoly Car, drop off a couple of large sacks of money with "$" printed on the side, and drive off. Both scenearios have about the same chance of success.

dropping money doesnt do it, it takes a plan and action.

For example I think there is a tour group that runs around to museums out east.
Visit EBT, have a picnic lunch off the train like they have set up while the train Wyes.

Some tour train like the Greenbriar could stop there, passengers transfer to the EBT train and go to town to shack up and ride etc. tour the enginehouse etc. Just using greenbriar as example, not it could happen. People do save up money for their vacation and spend it and often its fairly big bucks.

If its operating at a loss, have to turn that around and attract your business. If your going to sit, sell hoppers, portions of the line, your going to go nowhere, fast. EBT has something for it, gotta work it.

In the end, no matter how good your plan is or how much money you have, if the man who owns the train set doesn't want to sell it to you, he's not going to sell it to you. There have been multiple attempts, some unknown to the majority of us, over the past 40 years, to buy the East Broad Top, and the owner has rebuffed them all -- except for the most recent one. And he is under no obligation to explain to any of us why he refused those offers and accepted this one.

The Smithsonian has done this in the past. That's good for perhaps a busload a month at absolute max, more likely two to four busloads a year. Who do you put on the other 100 or so trainloads a year?

You are using, as your example, something that hasn't even happened yet, planned for another state/railroad, with a concept that might be described as tenuous at best and fantastically delusional at worst, in a specialized industry (luxury train tour travel) that has left a LONG string of failures behind it (American Orient Express, Acadian, etc.)


What it has going for it is emotional at best, and there's nowhere near enough of it to "take to the bank" as the saying goes.
I have personally taken people with serious money to the EBT, people who were ideologically aligned with the Kovalchicks and able to discuss things with them. Any chance of them "saving" the railroad disappeared when they saw first-hand how remote Orbisonia/Rockhill Furnace was. We had some long discussions in the pizza parlor, the only place to get a meal in town (at that time). They reiterated everything I already knew--why Strasburg was a success and the EBT would never be.

To create a "successful" excursion operation, you have to throw authenticity and preservation onto the sacrificial pyre. Does the Strasburg, Valley RR, etc. operate a train with the original gas lokie or a hand-me-down steam loco and worn-out coach from the PRR/New Haven/etc.? No. Do they board passengers roadside off the mill siding? No. They have operations that LOOK old-fashioned but shroud all kinds of modern trappings--clean handicapped-accessible toilets, parlor and dining cars with modern gear, rebuilt freight locomotives, etc.

Modern people give lip service to wanting "authenticity" and historic preservation, but the reality is that almost everyone really demands a tenuous grasp to "civilization." For most families in the United States, or even the elderly or retired with disposable cash, The Powers That Be help you if you get the mother away from clean toilets with diaper changing stations, the kids away from a wi-fi or cell phone signal, or the SUV driver away from pavement. We want to preserve Independence Hall, the Constitution, Colonial Williamsburg, the country farmstead, Lincoln's log cabin, and Yosemite, just as long as you surround them with modern, shiny Visitors Centers, multimedia "experience centers," and cafeterias serving food with which they're comfortable.

If someone were to make me a "benevolent dictator," I would propose that the answer would be to open a major, successful luxury resort, on the scale and scope of The Greenbrier or Berkeley Springs or some of the noted ski resorts, at nearby Raystown Lake and incorporate tours of the EBT and Rockhill Trolley Museum into the tour packages....... (There already is a "resort" over there, little more than a glorified campground however....)

Is it maybe time to stop thinking about restoring EBT to it's former glory for frequent operations - and instead focus on trying to get it re-open for select weekend dates/special events? One or two summer weekend days per month, school field trips/weekday charters - then fall foliage trains, christmas-theme trains - a few dinner trains here and there - and leave it at that, for now? Would that be more feasible to attempt that instead of trying to get it back to where it was all at once? Start slow and re-build that way...

I thought people would be able to think about how to get the EBT successful enough to expand to and beyond Mt. Union. Of course Orbisonia is remote, but Mt. Union is right along the PRR right of way.

If people would care more about reviving the EBT and expanding to Mt. Union and beyond, it would have a more positive future.

I have only seen about 1 person on here who gives a shit about that, which is very, VERY sad.

Losing the EBT would be a tragedly of BIBLICAL proportions, so let's go to the next city council meeting at Rockhill and give some positive ideas about how to revive and expand operations, and who would be good at doing that.

I personally would want an owner who cares about the surviving coal trestle in Mt. Union.

I don't think there's a single person here who doesn't wish the best for EBT. I'm certain every person with the slightest interest in railroad preservation would like to see the line fully restored and operable, but we must also put our own emotions aside and think realistically. Trains are highly dependent on infrastructure and heavy capital investment. This obviously means you need to turn a profit generating enough cash flow to reinvest back in the property, or you need charitable donations.

Unfortunately, as many here have already mentioned, the railroad exists in a pretty desolate area that lacks a sufficient market to support the past Orbisonia operations, let alone the full line from Alvan to Mount Union. And few people with deep pockets will have enough sentimental attachment in the EBT to justify pouring their hard earned cash into it. So while people are willing and hopeful that the line can be fully revived, there has yet to be any realistic proposal to finance such an endeavor.

EBT fanatic231 --

Here's a little history lesson. For well over 55 years, railfans have been lamenting the fate of the EBT, just as you are today. We have been thinking about ways to preserve the railroad. It deserves to be saved, but none of us has pockets deep enough to do so. The Kovalchick family subsidized its operations for over 50 years, and even today, is spending money for some minimal level of maintenance and security.

Even reopening the 5 miles of track from Rockhill Furnace to Colgate Grove, meeting the federal requirements for steam locomotives, water treatment, engineer certification, track inspection and repairs, not to mention insurance, advertising, coal, lubricants and everything else required to operate a tourist railroad, I'd be willing to bet $500,000 a year would not cover it.

And expanding the railroad to Mount Union is not going to help. There aren't enough services available in Mount Union, there is no reason for a train to go there, nor is there the capital and imagination to make it work.

I mourn the shutdown of the East Broad Top. For nearly 50 years, it was a place I could visit that never seemed to change. For now, anyway, it's in suspended animation. Perhaps, ebtfanatic231, when you've grown up and made your millions, you can personally go in and buy it and revive it, and you can be the boss of it. That's when you can do whatever you want with the coal trestle in Mount Union. (Incidentally, it's not really a coal trestle. Boney from the coal processing plant was loaded into hoppers, which were then switched over to the trestle. The boney was dumped into trucks, which then hauled the waste material to a dump site south of town. )

As has been said many times before, the very reason that the EBT exists largely intact today, is also the very reason it is so hard to make a go of it as a successful tourist draw - the depressed local economy and lack of other reasons to go there. That said, I like some elements of suggestions that have been made.

There probably will never be enough demand in the Mt. Union/Orbisonia area for a major motel chain to come in. Same for a place like even Denny's to set up in town. However, with the advent of things like airbnb, perhaps it would be possible for some local residents to make some extra income renting rooms to people coming to see the railroad. Put links into the railroad's webpage for accommodations. It wouldn't work for a bus group, but they have a bus to go somewhere else at the end of the day, and the passengers aren't the ones driving. Also, it's been more than a few years since I've been there, but isn't the place in Orbisonia where the Friends have their annual dinner and auction a rental hall of some kind for a local service organization? What if a local group, or groups on a rotating basis, were to open it up as a fund-raising "restaurant" for operating weekends? That might meet a lot of the need. My prototype for that is how concessions are handled for the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field. You won't find Aramark, or Marriott Host there. All of the concessions are run by local service organizations - Lions, Rotary, etc. It's a great example, everything by and for the local community. It also would be incentive for the local community to back the return of regular operations on the railroad.

Right here is a demonstration of fallacious thinking. Being along the PRR right-of-way means NOTHING. It wouldn't even be relevant if Amtrak trains stopped there--which they don't and most likely never will.
It's FAR more important that Mt. Union is along U.S. Route 22--which, sad to say for any aspiring EBT rail barons, is at best a tertiary transportation route taken by people with little other option to get to and from a destination, ceasing to be a major thoroughfare after the Pa. Turnpike was opened 70 years ago and sinking even further after Interstate 80 was opened in 1970.

We care, but we have to be realistic--not enough people are going to care to make a groundswell, "grassroots" move that will save the line. This isn't "The Titfield Thunderbolt"--which, by the way, was really a fantasy story with a bit of reality contaminating the literary licence.

We care. But we still respect property rights and political reality, bitter as they may be at times to the altruistic-minded.


Without being snide or sarcastic, or urging you to get a global perspective of the definition of "tragedy," that will get you nowhere. Even if the ideas are good, there's not enough legal or political basis to make things happen on the local, county, regional, or state level. Period.

I guarantee you that said trestle is the absolute LEAST concern of any serious preservation effort. If you love and cherish that thing so much, you had better go in and do a complete and thorough documentation on it, because it will most assuredly fall to the next store franchisee or railroad shop builder wanting that real estate to "create jobs in a depressed Appalachian region"......

Found during an entirely unrelated search: Required reading for those who missed it the first time around in 2009:

www.rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=28265

and people run to Alaska to ride the WP&Y. Or run to Disneyland.

What your describing is exactly what EBT is/at/about and its aura.


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