Re: EBT

At the time the Safety Appliance Act actually went into effect Sept. 1903, the East Broad Top Railroad & Coal Company considered itself a private carrier and did not come under the jurisdiction of the law. Later it became profitable to ship their washed finished coal via interline, interstate zone way-billing and that then made them a common carrier. Without interline way-billing a line like the EBT was looked at by the ICC as an industry.

For example in 1924, a power company purchased the Albany & Southern interurban railway from Albany, NY to Hudson, NY via Nassau and Niverville. This was a 3rd rail and over head wire trolley line but they carried considerable freight at night using electric locomotives. The power company applied to the ICC to abandon the entire line and acknowledge the volume of lumber, coal and other freight handled. The ICC replied that the line was not a common-carrier and to get their abandonment approval from the State PUC, which they did. The ICC discovered that all the freight was only way-billed to the interchange stations of Renssealer (NYC), Niverville (B&A) and Hudson (NYC) and all the further car movement were like an industry moving a car to its private track location. None of the various stations on the A&S were revenue station and posted in the Open & Prepaid register where the listing of station would be for any revenue way-billing. Being a Common-Carrier is based on the actual interline way-billing and not by the actual handling of the cars. Freight on a trolley interurban railroad did not make it a common-carrier. The ICC only has jurisdiction where it is a common-carrier handling way-billed interline commerce.

This gave the East Broad Top a few more years to have the equipment up-graded to fit the requirement of the Safety Appliance Act. One of their early interline freight shipment of their washed coal was to Campbell Soup, and Radio Corp of America at Camden, NJ, That was interstate and involved a ferry movement, and washing and car transfer at Mt. Union cleaning plant. The way-billing of the coal was from Robertsdale, PA to Camden, NJ. Some was routed full distance PRR and some was split with interchange to RDG which use the Cooper Point ferry slip terminal for delivery to the industries direct.