East Broad Top Railroad

The East Broad Top Railroad was built in the 1870s to carry coal out of the mountains of central Pennsylvania, on rails just three feet apart. When its freight trains stopped in 1956, the crews went home and left almost everything where it stood — the locomotives, the cars, the roundhouse and the machine shop — and the scrap dealer who bought it scrapped almost none of it. It is the last three-foot-gauge common carrier east of the Rocky Mountains, and a National Historic Landmark since 1964.

Today the trains leave the 1906 station at Orbisonia, in the village of Rockhill Furnace, behind No. 16, a Baldwin Mikado of 1916. The regular trip runs 4.5 miles north through the farms and woods of the Aughwick Valley to the picnic grove at Colgate Grove and back, an hour in all; on a few dates a season a second train heads south over newly relaid track. The shops can be toured the same day.

Trains run from May to October, Friday to Sunday, and Wednesday to Sunday in summer.

Trains leave from Orbisonia Station, a two-storey depot of 1906 in Rockhill Furnace with a long platform canopy. You collect your tickets at the window here, assigned to a car and a seat, and the train draws up along the platform. There are four ways to ride: an enclosed coach with padded walkover seats and windows that open, an open-air car with outward-facing benches under a sunshade, the cinder car right behind the locomotive, roofless and close to the smoke, and a caboose.

Heading north, the train leaves the village and settles into the Aughwick Valley, a broad farmed valley between wooded ridges. The line runs through cuttings and along the edges of fields, over the long fill near Runk Road, to Colgate Grove, 4.5 miles out. Here the train turns on a wye among the trees. On the two morning departures you can get off with a picnic and come back on a later train, about an hour and a half after; the grove has two shelters and restrooms, but no running water or electricity. On the way home the train turns once more in the Rockhill yard, passing the shops, before it returns to the station. The whole trip is nine miles and takes an hour.

South towards Pogue

The line south of Rockhill fell silent in 1956. Volunteers and contractors have been clearing and relaying it since the railroad changed hands, and on a few dates each season a southbound train runs 2.5 miles to the Route 994 crossing, some trips running on in front of Southern Huntingdon County High School towards Pogue. It is a short run, 30 to 45 minutes, over track that had seen no passenger train for almost 70 years.

The engines and the shops

The East Broad Top used only steam locomotives in its working life, and bought six Mikados, locomotives with the 2-8-2 wheel arrangement, from Baldwin in Philadelphia between 1911 and 1920. No. 16, of 1916, was the first of the three big ones, with a superheater and piston valves. It was overhauled in 1955, made a handful of trips before the railroad closed, and returned to service on 1 February 2023. It pulls the trains from Friday to Sunday; on Wednesdays and Thursdays a vintage diesel usually does, and any departure not in steam is labelled as diesel on the railroad's website.

All six Mikados are still here, in the eight-stall roundhouse. Beside it stands the machine shop, where one stationary steam engine drove every machine through a web of overhead shafts and leather belts, the largest and most intact such shop in the United States according to the railroad. The guided tour covers the freight office, the roundhouse and the shop in about an hour.

The railroad was bought in 2020 by the non-profit EBT Foundation, which reopened it in 2021 and runs it today with the volunteers of the Friends of the East Broad Top.

The regular season runs from 1 May to 31 October, with trains Friday to Sunday, and Wednesday to Sunday between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Every trip is a round trip from Orbisonia Station, and each lasts about an hour.

In October 2026 the regular trains run on 2–4 and 9 October, then Wednesday to Friday for the rest of the month; the weekends from 10 to 31 October are given over to the Pumpkin Patch Express, a 2½-hour event train to Colgate Grove at 10:00, 11:30, 13:00 and 14:30. Out of season there are Saturday trains from mid-February to late April, and Christmas in Coal Country from the weekend after Thanksgiving.

Good to know:

• Picnic at the grove: get off at Colgate Grove from the 10:30 or 12:00 train, tell the crew which train you will return on, and ride back on the next one, about 90 minutes later — back at Orbisonia at 13:00 or 14:30.
• Arrive half an hour early. Tickets are not emailed; everyone collects them at the Orbisonia Station window, 421 Meadow Street, Rockhill Furnace.
• Steam or diesel: Friday to Sunday trains are booked for steam, Wednesday and Thursday trains usually for a diesel. There are no toilets on the train; there are restrooms at the station and at the grove.
• Rain or shine. The enclosed coaches are heated in the colder months.

Departures as of September 2026, from the railroad's own pages and its booking system. Confirm before travelling on eastbroadtop.com (opens in a new tab).

Tickets are sold online for a train, a time and a class, and collected at the station window, which also sells walk-up seats when there is room. North or south, the fare is $25 for adults (13 and over) and $15 for children aged 2 to 12 in the coach, open-air car or cinder car, and $30 and $20 in the caboose; children aged 1 and under ride free on a lap. Both trips together cost $40 and $25, and a shop tour adds $5. Seniors get $1 off, military $3.

There are no refunds, but before departure a ticket's value can be moved to credit, for a $6 fee per ticket. Fares checked September 2026 at eastbroadtop.com (opens in a new tab); US dollars.

No rail pass covers the East Broad Top. It is run by the non-profit EBT Foundation, which sells its own tickets. Amtrak's USA Rail Pass is valid only on Amtrak's own trains and Thruway buses, and Interrail and Eurail do not apply anywhere in the United States.

The only reductions are the ones the railroad offers itself: child, senior and military rates, free travel for children aged 1 and under, the combined north-and-south ticket and the train-and-tour ticket. For regular visitors it also sells a season pass.

Checked September 2026 against eastbroadtop.com (opens in a new tab) and amtrak.com (opens in a new tab).

Rockhill Furnace is a borough of fewer than 400 people in Huntingdon County, in the hills of central Pennsylvania. The trolley museum is across the street from the station, and the gorges, caves and lake of the Raystown country are a drive to the west. Further up the old line, the Friends of the East Broad Top keep a free museum in the coal town of Robertsdale, about 40 minutes away by road.

In Rockhill Furnace itself there are only a few holiday rentals. The nearest hotels and inns are in and around Huntingdon and on the shores of Raystown Lake.

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