The East Broad Top Railroad & Coal Company was chartered in 1856 to mine and transport coal from Broad Top Mountain, a plateau in Pennsylvania south of the Juniata River about halfway between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Construction did not begin until 1872, after the road’s directors had chosen a track gauge of 3 feet. The line was opened from Mount Union, on the main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad, south to Orbisonia in 1873 and extended farther south to Robertsdale in 1874. By then the Rockhill Iron & Coal Company had been organized by the same management.
The Shade Gap Railroad was incorporated in 1884 to handle business that was sure to result from the construction of the South Pennsylvania Railroad, a line across the state backed by New York Central interests. A year later the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central called a truce, and the half-dug tunnels of the South Penn were abandoned for the next 50 years.
The East Broad Top had a long career of carrying mostly coal but also limestone, lumber, and bark; its history is peppered with strikes by mine workers and flooding rivers and creeks. The EBT hit on hard times in the 1890s and was rehabilitated in the early 1900s. In 1919 the road was purchased by Madeira, Hill & Co., a coal mining firm. The chief improvements under that management were a coal-cleaning plant at Mount Union and facilities for changing the trucks of standard gauge cars so they could move on the EBT. In 1934 Madeira, Hill underwent voluntary bankruptcy and in 1937 went bankrupt again.
In 1938 the road’s bondholders bought the East Broad Top and the mining company and reorganized them as the Rockhill Coal Company. The Shade Gap branch finally got the traffic for which it had been built when the long-abandoned roadbed of the South Penn was used as the foundation for the Pennsylvania Turnpike, construction of which began in 1939.
The demand for coal dropped as oil and gas took its place in homes and industries. The Rockhill Coal Co. decided to close its mines and offered the EBT to the Pennsylvania Railroad at scrap prices, but Pennsy declined the offer. The Interstate Commerce Commission approved abandonment effective March 31, 1956, and the last train ran on April 13, 1956, just three days short of the centennial of the chartering of the railroad. Nothing was scrapped immediately; the locomotives and cars were stored on the property.
The railroad and the coal company were purchased by Kovalchick Salvage Co., a scrap dealer. Nick Kovalchick, its president, petitioned to postpone dismantling the railroad and the mine facilities, and mining activity resumed in 1957, but the coal moved in trucks. In 1960 Kovalchick was asked if the railroad could be reactivated for the celebration of the bicentennial of Orbisonia. It could, and the East Broad Top reopened on Aug. 13, 1960.
From then into the 2000s, EBT operated as a tourist railroad during the summer season. In 1963 standard gauge tracks were laid on a short portion of the Shade Gap branch by Railways to Yesterday, which operates a trolley museum at Orbisonia. From 2009 to 2011, the railroad was leased to and operated by the East Broad Top Railroad Preservation Association. The railroad did not operate during 2012 or 2013, but in June 2013 the EBTRPA purchased part of the EBT in hopes of resuming operation.
