Mention East Broad Top to the average railfan, and their thoughts will generally go to the time capsule that is Orbisonia/Rockhill Furnace and the stable of six narrow gauge Mikados that were left in the shops when the road shut down in 1956. Less often considered is the interchange yard at Mount Union, where standard gauge cars received from the PRR were lifted on the timber transfer and equipped with narrow gauge trucks and couplers to travel over the EBT main line.
Two standard gauge 0-6-0’s handled the duties of switching the dual-gauge Mount Union yards, and they too were locked in their enginehouse in Mount Union when the road shut down. They remained there until 1975, when the smaller Number 6 was taken out and sent to the Whitewater Valley Railroad in Indiana. Number 3 remains locked in the Mount Union enginehouse today, but the 6 was soon feeling fire in its belly as the main steam locomotive on the WVRR. The 6 was pressed into service in primer paint. This photo shows the locomotive in more conventional paint in Connersvile in 1981. A year later, the 0-6-0 was taken out of service for boiler work. Subsequent financial constraints at the WVRR, coupled with revised boiler requirements as a result of the Gettysburg Railroad boiler failure, permanently derailed the work on Number 6. The most recent photo that I could locate depicts a very deteriorated condition of the 0-6-0. I can’t locate any information from the past decade, but this link includes instructions for contributing to a fund to stabilize the condition of the 0-6-0.
