The three buses of conventioneers were split into three groups, with each one visiting the Rockhill Trolley Museum, riding the East Broad Top Railroad and receiving an EBT shop tour throughout the day. The group I was with started with the trolley museum and we had plenty of time to explore the car barn before our ride.
Rockhill Trolley MuseumThe Rockhill Trolley Museum is a heritage railway in Rockhill Furnace, Pennsylvania that collects and restores trolley, interurban and transit cars. Founded in 1960, the museum operates what has been historically referred to as the Shade Gap Electric Railway to demonstrate the operable pieces in its collection. "Shade Gap" refers to the name of a branch of the East Broad Top Railroad, from whom the museum leases it property. The first car acquired by the museum in 1960 was Johnstown Traction 311. Recent acquisitions include Public Service Coordinated Transport (later New Jersey Transit), Newark, NJ Presidents' Conference Committee Car 6 and Iowa Terminal Railroad Snow Sweeper 3.
The museum formerly operated under its corporate name, Railways to Yesterday. It changed to its current name to acknowledge and enhance its relationship with, and provide mutual promotional support to, its hometown.
The museum is open from May through October and for special holiday events. For the latter, including Easter, Pumpkin Festival in October and Christmas in Coal Country, the museum partners with the East Broad Top Railroad, which is across the street. While the two organizations are not formally affiliated and do not cross-honour tickets, the railroad sells tickets for the combined events with the trolley museum and the two organizations share volunteers and labour expertise.
York Railways Company rare curved-side streetcar 163 built by Brill in 1924. The most ambitious restoration project our museum has undertaken to date is York Railways 163. Another trolley builder, the Cincinnati Car Company, had a patent on the curved-side car. Brill built five curved-side cars for York Railways and in doing so, infringed on the patent. Cincinnati sued Brill. Consequently, these five curved-side cars were the only ones built by Brill. York 163 is the only preserved and operable trolley from the York Railways system, which stopped all streetcar operations on February 4, 1939. It was sold to be used as a summer home along Conewago creek north of York and the body survived there until 1972, when Hurricane Agnes completely flooded the car, knocking it off its foundation. The owners no longer wanted the car and donated the body to the museum.
Johnstown Traction Company comfortable car 355, built by the St. Louis Car Company in 1925. They were known as the "Quality Shops", where trolleys, rapid transit cars, and even airplanes were built for nearly 90 years, with production finally ceasing in 1973. Car 355 now has controls at both ends of the car, although it was built with controls at one end only. It is typical of the many lightweight cars built in this time period. Trolley 355 has a safety air brake system similar to that on Johnstown Trolley Car 311, which permitted the car to be operated with a crew of one. If the motorman became disabled while the car was in motion, the safety air brake system would automatically stop the car.
This type of air brake system saved the transit company many salaries, as it allowed only one person to both operate the car and collect fares. Instead of paying a roving conductor, passengers paid their fares when they boarded or left the car.
When trolleys stopped operating in Johnstown in 1960, car 355 left for a proposed museum in New Hampshire. Our museum acquired it in 1970 from New Hampshire, when it became apparent that the proposed museum would never be developed. Car 355 has received one of the most extensive restorations at the museum with the help of the ISTEA grant that the museum received from PennDOT. The running gear was extensively rebuilt by the museum, prior to the body restoration. All major areas on the car received new materials, such as steel siding and under frame work, air piping, electrical wiring, flooring, refinished seating material and wooden frames and refinished original cherry woodwork interior.
Pennsylvania Railroad caboose 477138 built by the railroad in 1917.
Harrisburg Railways wooden semi-convertible 710 built by Brill in 1913. This is an unusual car since it was constructed with an arch roof and a semi-convertible window pattern. The windows of this car slide up into the roof of the car, as they do in Porto Cars 172 and 249, both operating at the museum. Car 710 was in operation until the end of trolley service in Harrisburg on July 15, 1939. It was quite common for old trolley bodies to be sold and used as summer homes, sheds or club houses. For 47 years, 710 was used as a summer home near Mt. Holly Springs, Pennsylvania. After many years in Mt. Holly Springs, the car's owner passed away and the family no longer wanted the car. A building had been built around the entire car to provide additional living space during its years as a summer home. Our volunteers cleared the building away from car 710 and moved it to our site.
Car 710 is a very historic car, being one of only two cars from Harrisburg preserved today. While car 710 will take years of restoration work to return it to operation, parts are being gathered now to insure that one day car it will return to the rails.
Philadelphia Transportation Company city & suburban PCC car 2743 built by St. Louis Car Company in 1947. During the 1930's, transit companies were in competition with the private automobile since people were using their own automobiles as they were affordable. The electric railway industry commissioned a Presidents’ Conference Committee to design a new standard trolley to increase ridership. The PCC, named for the Presidents’ Conference Committee, saved many transit companies from early abandonment.
It has small windows above the main passenger windows which were called standee windows. PCC trolleys featured a smoother ride than the older trolleys, faster acceleration, a reduced noise level and comfortable seating. Most PCC cars built were single-ended, meaning that main controls were located only at one end of the car, with shop movement controls (or no controls at all) in the rear. Turning loops were required at the end of all lines in order to have the car travelling in the correct direction. A total of 210 such cars were built in a 1947 order for the Philadelphia Transportation Company.
Sociedade de Transportes Colectivos do Porto single-truck semi-convertible 172 built by the company in 1929. Car 172 is a Brill semi-convertible design, meaning the windows can be raised into roof pockets. This creates an open summer car effect with the convenience of being able to lower the windows in case of a rain storm or cool weather.
Car 172 is our example of a Toonerville trolley, a small two-axle trolley. The nickname comes from a series of silent comedy films by that name, which featured a rickety little trolley bouncing along the countryside as its motorman engaged in a series of comical adventures. Car 172 which is coincidentally where the first Toonerville trolley movies were made, before Hollywood even existed.
It has an attractive interior, the very ornate carved wood trim, fancy brass fittings and sliding end doors. It also has a unique seating arrangement, with two seats on one side and one seat on the other, made necessary by the narrow twisting streets of Porto. Car 172 came across the Atlantic Ocean with Porto work car 64 in 1967.
Both cars were trucked aboard highway trailers from Philadelphia to our museum. While several other American museums and groups have acquired cars from Porto, our Museum was the first to import cars from that city. Car 172 was in operating condition upon arrival at the museum and was placed in passenger operations immediately. Its four wheels give a bouncy ride, as frequently parodied in the Toonerville Trolley films. The body of 172 has been restored in our Buehler Shop and is a favourite with our visitors. Like sister car 249 from hilly Porto, 172 has three separate braking systems: air brakes, hand brakes and dynamic brakes.
Scranton Transit Sweeper single-truck snow sweeper 107, a one-of-a-kind vehicle built by Chicago and Joliet Electric Railway in 1910 and is a four-wheeled car with rotating brooms at both ends. It is a "steeple cab" design with operator controls only in the middle. After the C&JER stopped operations in 1933, it went to Scranton until they stopped operating trolleys on December 18, 1954. Scranton snowsweeper 107 and passenger car 505 were taken to the Rail City museum in Sandy Pond, New York and ultimately to the Magee Transportation Museum in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. In 1972, Hurricane Agnes flooded the Magee museum, forcing its closing. Our Museum acquired 107 in 1973 and returned it to operation, having used it many times to clear snow from the museum tracks.
Companhia de Transportes Coletivos open car 1875 built by Brill in 1912. Open cars were very expensive for the transit companies to operate. Unless the climate was always warm, the transit company needed to have a second set of cars for the passengers to ride during the winter weather. Rainstorms were also a problem, although curtains that could be drawn provided some relief. The public still loved the open cars in the hot summer months. It was necessary to have a crew of two people to operate an open car, a motorman to run the car and a conductor to collect the fares. This was a dangerous job for the conductor as he walked along the side running boards to collect the fares as traffic in the busy streets flew by him. For these reasons the open cars were replaced by closed cars or semi-convertible cars.
New Jersey Transit PCC Car 6 built by St. Louis Car Company in 1946. The car, which would become Public Service Coordinated Transport 6, was originally ordered by the Twin City Rapid Transit Company of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota in January 1945 as car 325, part of an order for 40 cars from the St. Louis Car Company. Twin City Rapid Transit specified extra wide cars with both gongs as well as electric horns, galvanized steel carbodies to help deter corrosion during the harsh winter conditions in which the car would operate, and backup controllers, which are mall auxiliary controllers located behind the rear seat for safer operation in reverse. Twin City Rapid Transit had several lines that terminated at wyes, necessitating lengthy operation in reverse. Electrical equipment for this order was split between General Electric and Westinghouse, and this order of cars was built with conductor's booths for two-man operation.
Public Service Coordinated Transport purchased the cars, including 325, for operation on the municipally owned 4.5 mile "City Subway" in Newark. At one time, PSCT and its predecessors operated trolley lines covering most of the state of New Jersey but started converting operations to bus as early as 1929. The City Subway, originally called the "City Railway", was built between 1929 and 1935 by the city of Newark in the bed of the abandoned Morris Canal to help relieve traffic congestion in downtown Newark and provide a faster entry and exit to downtown. At one time, five different trolley lines used all or part of the City Subway to enter and exit downtown Newark, but by 1952 only the 7 – City Subway line, operating from the northern edge of the city to Penn Station, remained in operation. PSCT requested the city pave the City Subway in 1952 to permit operation by dual-mode electric-diesel buses, but the city refused and requested PSCT purchase modern railway equipment after an engineering study determined paving of the subway was not feasible. PSCT first inspected the 25 "Brilliner" cars in operation in Atlantic City but were rejected due to the availability of 30 excellent second-hand PCC cars at very low prices from TCRT. TCRT Car 325 became PSCT 6 and the entire fleet of 30 cars was placed in service between December 1953 and January 1954 on the City Subway, sending the last of PSCT's conventional cars, all of which were over 30 years old, to the scrapyard. After the abandonment of streetcar service in Atlantic City in 1955, the City Subway became the last electric trolley line in New Jersey and would remain so for more than 40 years.
Philadelphia & Western freight motor 402 built by Detroit United Railways in 1920. The exact origins of very unique piece of equipmen remain somewhat unclear. It can be reasonably assumed that the car was constructed around 1920 in the Highland Park shops of the Detroit United Railway and numbered 2010. They both built and reconstructed a number of cars in house during the 1920's that have similar construction details to the 2010.
In 1943, the Philadelphia & Western lost its wooden freight motor 402 due to fire and needed a replacement due to wartime demands. The P&W acquired the 2010 from Frank Judge as part of an insurance settlement from the destruction of the original 402. Thus, 2010 was loaded on a flatcar and was delivered to the P&W via its interchange connection with the Pennsylvania Railroad's Cardington Branch at 69th Street in Upper Darby. Upon receipt by the P&W, the car was converted to a double-ended third-rail only motor and a door was cut into the former rear end of the car. The door enabled the car to carry long loads, like sticks of rail.
The 402 was used to haul freight as part of the P&W's meager interchange freight operation, which dwindled down to only a few carloads per year by the 1950's. The car was extensively used in work service and for towing of disabled equipment. The 402 towed both former Chicago, North Shore and Milwaukee Electroliners from the Pennsylvania Railroad interchange in 1963 and would later rescue these trains when they broke down on the line as well. The car also frequently towed the "pickle car", a flatcar equipped to spray de-icing chemicals on the third rail in freezing weather. The car would later be modified with a small plow under each platform to clear snow away from the third rail. The car passed into ownership of the PST Company in 1954 and SEPTA in 1970.
The car continued in use by SEPTA until 1990, when it was retired and offered for museum preservation. Railways To Yesterday, Inc., operators of the Rockhill Trolley Museum, acquired the car the same year and transported it to the museum site in Rockhill Furnace where it entered service in 1991. The car needed extensive control system work after acquisition by the museum as it had been used by SEPTA for load testing of new substations which caused significant damage.
U.S. Steel Clairton Works 50 ton switcher 21 built by Davenport in 1923. This company was a coke plant situated about 20 miles south of Pittsburgh.
Valley Railways suburban car 12 built by Jackson & Sharp in 1895. The Valley Railways was a little known trolley system that ran on the west shore of the Susquehanna River and connected Harrisburg with Cumberland County suburbs and the county seat, Carlisle. Trolley service was abandoned on Harrisburg's West Shore on April 9, 1938. It is the only known survivor of the Valley system and is one of few Jackson & Sharp cars preserved.
When built, Car 12 used a unique, single "Robinson-Radial" truck with six wheels. Around 1905, Car 12 was fitted with a pair of four wheel trucks, converting it into a double truck car. Declining ridership on the Valley Railways system left a need for fewer cars and it was removed from service in 1923. The trucks were used under another car and the body was tucked away in the Carlisle trolley barn until it was sold for $25 in 1930. Like several other trolleys in our collection, Car 12 was used as a summer home from 1932 until we acquired it. It was located northwest of Plainfield, Pennsylvania by one of our members in 1983 and moved to the museum in 1990, being the first car to be placed inside our new Carbarn Two, protected from the weather. For the first time in 74 years, Car 12 has been placed on wheels to permit movement on the museum's track, which is a temporary measure while a world-wide search continues for the proper trucks suitable for use under the car. Like other former trolley car summer homes, this car will take many thousands of hours and dollars to return to its former glory.
Pop-Up Metro Vivarail 230 multiple unit power car 230011. This 60-foot rail car, weighing 36 tons, was converted to run on Lithium Iron Magnesium Phosphate batteries. These batteries have a longer life cycle than lithium-ion batteries and are considered safer. Two battery rafts, each containing 60 cells, can run the train up to 60 miles on a full charge, depending on speed and grades.
An affiliate of Railroad Development Corporation (RDC), Pop-Up Metro is a fresh Transit Infrastructure alternative utilizing existing low-density freight rail lines and North America's only battery -propelled passenger cars. Pop-Up Metro offers a reliable, low-cost and sustainable option allowing communities considering rail options to both prove the concept and prove the market in an expedited, economic, low-risk manner. Pop-Up Metro is offered as a Turnkey "Kit" incorporating trains, ADA complaint modular platforms, charging equipment, maintenance infrastructure, training and operating plan as an annual lease, eliminating the high up-front capital commitment typically associated with light Metro start-ups or service extensions. Pop-Up Metro trains can be used to maximize the utility of existing light density freight lines in communities interested in rail transit options. For less than the cost of a full feasibility study, communities can test actual ridership and evaluate the operation while jump-starting the development of rail transit corridors.
Two active battery powered train-sets are now active in demonstration operations at Rockhill Furnace on a 1.8 mile test track on the East Broad Top Railroad.
Johnstown Traction Company comfortable car 355, which I boarded.
York Railways Company 163 which would follow us out to Blacklog Narrows.
The motorman waiting for his passengers.
NRHS members enjoying the trolley.
The journey to the end of the line, where I switched to York Railways Company 163.
Car 163 at Blacklog Narrows.
A few other members followed suit.
The journey to the Iron Work Furnaces.
The remains of the Rockhill Furnaces 1 and 2, casthouse and the Blast Engine House.
This diagram shows the layout of the facility. After one of the volunteers explained the history of the furnaces, we resumed our journey.
Car 355 followed us back to the museum.
The East Broad Top freight house built in 1906.
The Orbisonia East Broad Top station, also built in 1906.
The excursion train was being wyed.
Johnstown Traction Company double-truck Birney "safety car" 311 built by Wason in 1922. It was part of an order of cars for the City of Bangor, Maine, where it operated as number 14. It was sold to the Johnstown Traction Company in 1941 and served that city well, running until the end of service in 1960. Car 311 was the last Birney type car to be operated in any United States city on a regular schedule and was chartered repeatedly by trolley fans in the 1950's, as it was a favorite car of many.
This car was a lighter car than many and, most important to the transit companies, cut costs since it needed only one crew person to operate. Safety equipment brought the car to a stop should the operator become disabled. This development allowed many marginal transit systems to continue operating after they would otherwise have failed. Following the last day of service in Johnstown on June 11, 1960, trolley 311 was purchased by our newly-formed trolley museum. After much restoration, 311 became the first trolley to operate over the new museum line and also the first trolley to operate on any museum line in Pennsylvania. With periodic maintenance, car 311 has operated continuously at the museum for over 40 years, more years than it operated in Johnstown!
Pennsylvania Railroad 40-foot standard gauge steel boxcar 200-2000 built by the railroad in 1934. It was acquired by the East Broad Top from the Kiski Junction Railroad in August 2022 to illustrate how the historic common-carrier narrow gauge line once hauled larger cars on interchange trucks. The foundation intends to use the X29 to show East Broad Top's creative method of avoiding the costly and time-consuming transfer of freight between standard and three-foot narrow gauge cars. An inability to interchange cars is one of the main reasons narrow gauge lines failed. By using its Timber Transfer crane at Mount Union, its northern terminus and interchange point with the Pennsylvania Railroad main line, EBT was able to move carloads of telephone poles, lumber, cement, asphalt and other goods over its lines without the hassle of trans-shipment.
This ends my coverage of the Rockhill Trolley Museum. Following the request of the trolley musuem volunteers to safely cross Meadow Street, which is also Pennsylvania Highway 994, I did just that and went to lunch.
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