Re: East Broad Top

KevinM Wrote:
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> Unfortunately, being off the beaten-path, and
> without a real destination or significant scenery,
> I think EBT always had limited potential as a
> tourist railroad.

Off the beaten path? Think Sumpter Valley. We are 25 miles from the nearest town (Baker City, pop. less that 10,000) and 125 miles from anything like a population center. Despite this we have managed to keep going for 39 years, though sometimes by the skin of our teeth. And remember we started with just part of the old roadbed and an idea. Granted the potential is limited, as is ours, but the potential is still there. Done properly you do not need millions of dollars to do this kind of thing. If there are no attraction in the area the idea is to make one. The shop complex at Orbisonia is a world class industrial museum in hiding, way better than what we have. I should think that an interactive museum with an attached active railroad would be an attraction just about anywhere. So, would it make a ton of money? Probably not, but why does it have to? If anyone expects to make big bucks in tourist railroading they had better arrange for tour boats to dock beside their train. For most of us the money from fares will no more than cover the cost of running the train. Things like major repairs and 1472 inspections have to be covered by grants and donations. We have paid for 4 inspections this way, one of them involving some fairly serious fire box work.

While we have managed to get by with a volunteer workforce, it is better to have a cadre of paid workers. But this does not mean you assign the volunteers to the drudge work. We find that volunteers are fully capable if doing almost any task assigned to them. The only thing we pay for is boiler welding and overseeing work like rolling tubes and drilling/inserting stay bolts. This way we accomplished a 1472 inspection on No, 19, including partial replacement of some of the fire box sheets, constructing a new turret, and welding up some small boiler cracks, for about $50,000.

Of course, whatever happens to the EBT will be up to the owner, but if they want to keep it up it can be done.