Lite and Narrow Column - 2
“The EBT in the Iron Age,” March-June, 1990. While focusing on
the East Broad Top, the series also gives an insight into railroad
operations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries where
equipment was changing almost daily as demands for more
capacity resulted in heavier tonnage and larger locomotives.
The dumps
The first hopper cars purchased for the East Broad Top were
20 four-wheel cars in June, 1873. Used for construction of the
railroad, an additional 20 four-wheel cars joined in 1874. The
East Broad Top referred to these as “dumps,” the same as they
called the coal hoppers of the time. On other railroads they
named this design “buck jimmies” for the way they rocked and
rolled along the tracks due to their rigid trucks and the rough
track of the time. Very little data exists on these cars, but spec-
ulation exists that they were one of three possible four-wheel
several cars, and for the East Broad Top, it was the hopper
car – not just any hopper car, but the three-bay 35-ton cars.
However, this car didn’t develop overnight; it evolved as the
design of hopper cars changed (over many years) to meet the
fluctuating needs of the railroad.
The beginning
From the outset, the East Broad Top Railroad was part of a
greater scheme – that of being the method of moving iron ore
and fuel from the mines to the iron furnaces, then moving fin-
ished pig iron to the interchange with the Pennsy and on to the
iron foundries of Pennsylvania.
Construction of the railroad began in 1872, and the first section
of the railroad from the interchange with the Pennsylvania rail-
road at Mt. Union to the new company town at Rockhill, across
Blacklog Creek from the town of Orbisonia was completed in
1873. The rest of the 30-mile main line to Robertsdale com-
pleted in 1874.
Although the primary purpose of the railroad was to serve the
iron furnaces at Rockhill, it was unable to do so until the two
furnaces went into blast in January 1876, with the first ship-
ment of pig iron made in March. The term pig iron comes from
the ingot cavity in sand castings that fills when a furnace is
tapped. A channel leading from the tapping mouth of the fur-
nace allows molten iron to flow into the ingot molds much like
the cast metal parts we used today in modeling. When cool,
the tail, or sprue, is removed before shipping.
For a comprehensive look at the early history of the East Broad
Top in the Iron Age (1876-1909), I recommend the four-part
series that Lee Rainey wrote in
Railroad Model Craftsman
,
2
2. Typical four-wheeled car from the late 1800s. This
is a one-ton car as modeled by Grandt Line in O
scale. Photo courtesy of Grandt Line.
MRH-Dec 2014
