Lite and Narrow Column - 3
designs that Billmeyer and Small, a York, Pennsylvania car
builder, offered. EBT purchased other cars from this car builder
during the same time. Based on the designs at the time, the
cars were probably 12 feet long and had a capacity of 4.5 tons,
based on the locomotive performances at the time. Other ver-
sions of the four-wheel cars were for molten slag, iron cars
lined with fire brick and with spouts on each side for unload-
ing, much like contemporary slag cars, and unusual funnel-
shaped cinder cars. The listing of freight cars in the 1880s gave
the number of coal cars at 180, the ore cars at 30, and 10 cin-
der cars. This increased to 254 coal cars and 40 ore cars, with
an unknown number of cinder cars by 1905.
These cars did not survive much past 1893, when the furnace
closed down and the Billmeyer and Small eight-wheel 10-ton
self-clearing hopper cars replaced them.
Modeling these cars in the larger scales is easy with avail-
ability of the “Buck Jimmy” cars in On30 from Boulder Valley
Models. While based on Mann’s Creek prototypes, they
are very much usable for the similar designs the East Broad
Top used. The Grandt Line car seen in the photo could be a
substitute. The BTS mine car could be the starting point for
the car, but these are stationary models and a lot of work is
needed to get them to run.
The eight-wheel dumps
In 1874, the East Broad Top received the first cars from
Billmeyer and Small that became the standard hopper car until
the advent of steel cars. These were eight-wheel, 10-ton all-
wood hopper cars. They were 23’6” long and 6’ wide with a
light weight of 9,500 pounds, and a capacity of 10 long tons
(22,400 lbs.). The cars were so popular that the railroad pur-
chased 132 of the design by 1882. In addition to purchasing
the hopper cars, the East Broad Top began to build their own
copies of the car. Apparently there were some deficiencies
with the design, as the EBT began to beef-up the cars, increas-
ing their light weight to 11,400 lbs. or more, yet retaining the
same 10-ton capacity. This particular design became the stan-
dard East Broad Top hopper, with the number of cars in service
growing to 366 by 1913.
While the majority of these cars remained the 10-ton size,
the railroad built 94 of the cars with a capacity of 15 tons and
10 with a 20-ton capacity. During this period the railroad also
scrapped or retired 117 of the 10-ton cars.
3
3. The “buck jimmy” produced in On30 by Boulder
Valley Models. It is very similar to the cars used
by the East Broad Top. The car following the “buck
jimmy” is a Bachmann side-dump car and, while of
the same era, it was never used by the EBT. Photo
courtesy of Boulder Valley Models.
MRH-Dec 2014
