Rooster;
Nice video. Brings back memories of firing for the W,K&S. It was the fireman’s responsibility to flag at crossings.
Best, David Meashey
The view off the back deck tonight as the last train gets put away. You can just see the headlight above an abandoned house trailer between us and the station.
Nice shot!
Bummer. I’ll bet you’d really like to see that gone. Rooster’s cousin Vinny might be able to help… 
Naahh,
Vinny lives in Philly.
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I don’t think the owners have any plans to remove it. There are a few in this town. This one isn’t in horrible condition and someone mows the grass. I imagine there isn’t much tax savings in paying to have it removed. In the summer you can’t see much of it because it’s all overgrown around it.
A few weeks ago at the Friends work weekend, we were emptying a storage loft in the paint shop so it could be removed allowing caboose 27 in for painting some time soon.
Most of what was up there was lumber, some 24" wide boards included. All of that went to the lumber shed for possible future use. There was also a lot of junk that was hauled to the dumpster. I rescued this from the dumpster pile and put it in my car. It was so dusty you could barely read the imprint, but I saw Shelton CT, so I thought it was worth looking at closer.
Today I brought it into the shop and used a large soft brush to clean off about a 1/8" of heavy black dust. This is the result. I believe this will be the first wall hanging in my shop…
I’m going to send this pic to the archivist and see if she can tell me who J.O. Bowmaster was.
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I dug into the American Crucible Co. a little bit. What I would like to know is what was fragile that they shipped?
I did find this and would have gone great with the Big Indian Store…lol
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vtg-case-lot-50-matchbooks-american-2101197692
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I heard back from the EBT Archivist. The addressee is John Bowmaster who was the master mechanic at the EBT through the end of common carrier operations in 1956.
With that information I can guess that this crate was received in the late 1940’s or early 1950’s. It’s not likely much later than that as the railroad wasn’t making capital purchases near the end.
Maybe crucibles?
…
Great find Jon. It’ll look great on the wall.
Cheers
N
The EBT is doing a lot of switching today in preparation for a photo charter tomorrow and Friday. There will be a scheduled freight on Saturday morning. They grabbed a string of hoppers from the back yard!
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You must really hate that noise and commotion, you will never finish
Unfortunately, EBT 16 went down Wednesday with a valve gear problem. It seems some residual water remained in the engine and with 10 days of single digit temps, it froze doing some damage. As a result, the photo charter is being powered by Porter #19. Here it is running by the house on it’s way south…
They are working to correct the problem, but no word yet on if the Winter Spectacular will be steam and diesel, or just diesel. M1 will run regardless.
EDIT TO UPDATE: At tonight’s dinner, Brad explained the issue with 16. Bottom line is a bent crank pin. Cause was a frozen valve after sub zero temps a few days ago. Dave and Linn removed the pin and heat bent it back. The engine ran a few miles light for testing, but it still wasn’t right so they repeated the process to tweak it some more. They have a 4AM call Sunday and I’m sure there will be another light run test run early. If they are happy with the repair, 16 will run.
Looks like this is a mixed freight/passenger service. What is being freighted Jon?
The East Broad Top was a coal hauler. Most “Miner’s Trains”, of which this is a recreation, ran with a combine on the rear rather than a caboose. Due to the popularity of the more expensive caboose tickets, the railroad includes one on the tourist version.
Since 1956 the hoppers have been empty, but can still be seen rolling down the tracks at special events.
This morning’s miner’s train was also pulled by Porter #19. Steam locomotive 16 ran a test run south to the 994 crossing after the second crank pin repair. The repair must have been judged sound as they put it on the morning passenger run 
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This was an FEBT work weekend. I worked on some finishing details for Combine 14. One of the perks of being a volunteer is having unrestricted access to the yard. While most people take pictures of the train, I like to take pictures of the buildings and the abundant stuff like these used parts stored in the lumber shed…
The railroad had a telehandler on the property last week to move the fire pumps to their permanent home in the lower part of the coal dock. Very soon the fire suppression system will be operational. The local fire department is only a few blocks away, but there are no hydrants. All water is tanked to fire scenes. The EBTF improved the existing reservoir and with the fire pumps will be able to supply several hydrants and the sprinkler system in the roundhouse and shop buildings. This would give the volunteers a fighting chance should fire ever break out.
While the telehandler was here, the EBTF installed the chutes on the coal dock…
In order to use the now restored coal dock a retaining wall and access track needs to be rebuilt.
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I don’t know if I mentioned it here, but I had a tree company thin out the woods between the back yard and the track. You can see some of the fresh cuts it this picture. It looked like the thicket at the right before they started…
The snow has melted revealing a bunch of trash. It must be a Pensyltucky thing to burn your trash, then dump what doesn’t burn in the woods. I spent close to an hour just cleaning up a spot were a burn barrel was repeatedly dumped.
In some cases, they didn’t even bother to burn it. I found dozens of gallon zip lock bags full of decomposed who knows what and literally hundreds of beer cans and bottles.
I filled two 42 gallon contractor bags and still have some left for next week’s trash pick up. This is what it looks like now…
That big white block is styrofoam that won’t fit in the can this week. The light areas on the ground are fresh cut tree stumps. I’m debating picking up all the branches before the weeds take over.
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And yesterday while Fake Spring continued, I used my manual pole saw and lopping shears to remove several dead branches that hang into the frame when taking pictures. I also cut down a bunch of brush from the side of the road bed.
Pictures with no leaves don’t show much change, but once things leaf out if will show a big difference…
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