2025 at the East Broad Top

For our Annual Gathering in 2025 we met in Southcentral Pennsylvania during the extended first weekend in October where we were hosted on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday by the Friends of the East Broad Top during their annual Reunion.   This was our largest Annual Gathering ever; over 35 participants alternated among running their trains, riding EBT trains, railfanning, and attending Reunion workshops.  

Here's a visual summary of what took place:

First up is recently-restored #16 on a charter passenger special on Friday while we were setting up and testing Mike and Barb Moore's two portable tracks.

Early Saturday morning, before the sun had crested the hills to the east and burned off the valley fog, #16 was backing away from the turntable and coupling up to a string of hoppers for a special Reunion hoppers-only photo charter.   Below you can see, from l-to-r, Barb Moore, Rich Poletto, and Mike Moore all watching #16 pulling up to the station to load passengers into the caboose.   Note how close to the action our setup is.  

Not to be outdone we ran a number of EBT trains ourselves.  Here you'll see one of the several Accucraft #12s in attendance on a hopper special of its own.  Below you'll see it passing through the yard; notice the EBT equipment on the yard tracks.  The bottom photo shows a Rich Yoder-built battery powered #15 passing by an Accucraft #12 cooling off after its run.

Pennsylvania has a rich heritage of backwoods logging railroads, so as you might expect we saw a lot of recognizable and some unusual logging locomotives and their trains.    First up is the earliest Accucraft Shay, the T-boilered open cabbed version, followed by the later two cylinder closed cab version.

Several years ago Scott Baldridge and Rich Blackham together scratchbuilt a pair of Heislers following a serial construction article which ran in SitG magazine.  Here are two photos of the two Heislers double-heading on the small track.

Scott has also scratchbuilt a Class A Climax, to what I believe must be 7/8ths scale, utilizing as many 'off the shelf' commercial components as he could track down.  The cylinders are from Graham Industries, the heating plant is from the eBay dealer Microcosm, bevel gears are from Stock Drive, and lots of r.c. car components went into the drive line.   Below the Class A Climax is a photo showing Rich and Scott's attractive display.  

A number of locomotives running during our Annual Gathering were either scratchbuilt or significantly modified commercial products.  Joseph Rue is still working on this entirely scratchbuilt loco which has a Byers-esque look to it.  Below Joseph's you'll see Rich's interpretation of the BAGRS design.

Next up is a much-modified Mamod constructed by the late Bob Thomas.  Bob machined new cylinders, a new safety valve, a new metering lubricator, and a chicken feed meths burner (in cab doorway); and this Mamod runs like a watch.  You'll also see a venerable Regner Konrad, bumped up to 7/8ths scale by Joel Novis, bringing crates of apples in from the orchard.  

We'll conclude our photos with some 'familiar faces' -- commercial locos which you'll likely recognize.  First up is the first train of Saturday morning, a stock Roundhouse Billy with some Accucraft carriages followed by another sunrise shot of an early-run Roundhouse Bertie which has had custom painting from Light Lines.  Note the EBT roundhouse beyond our tracks; the pickup trucks belong to the EBT employees who arrived in the wee hours.

Next is an Accucraft Isle of Man Caledonia below which is a Roundhouse Davenport.

Another Roundhouse product, the venerable Fowler, is followed by an even earlier Roundhouse product, an 0-6-0 meths-fired Lady Anne.  The Lady Anne, like its stable mate Dylan, was originally an 0-4-0 potboiler but Roundhouse later changed the chassis to an 0-6-0 configuration with internal slip eccentrics.  This Lady Anne was built from a kit and was later converted to outside Walschaerts v.g. while retaining the pot boiler heating plant.  

Those of you with long memories in our hobby will remember the Maxwell Hemmens Porter -- one of the early commercial loco models of an American prototype.  It was quite popular and sold well in North America until Maxwell Hemmens closed its doors and stopped production of steam models.   And even rarer heritage locomotive is the Merlin Sierra Leone Hunslet.  This loco, in all its glamour (Merlin certainly knew how to paint their locos well), is considered by many to be the acme of Merlin's narrow gauge loco production; it was designed by Don Pearse.