Much has been written about the Shade Gap Railroad, most notably by Rainey and Kyper in East Broad Top and by Lee Rainey in his series, "The EBT in the Iron Age," Railroad Model Craftsman, March - June, 1990. Frank Kyper introduced the topic in the Friends of the East Broad Top's Timber Transfer Vol. 2, Nos. 3 & 4, 1985. In addition, valuable background information on early railroad activities in the area appears in many books and pamphlets: Centennial History of the PRR, 1846-1946, by Burgess and Kennedy; The History of the Cumberland Valley Railroad, 1835-1919, by Paul J. Westhaeffer; Railroads of Pennsylvania Encyclopedia and Atlas, by Thomas T. Taber III; Railroads of Western Franklin County, by Randy Watts; Pennsylvania Transportation, by George Swetnam; Vanderbilt's Folly: A History of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, by William H. Shank, P.E.; and The Pennsylvania Turnpike: A History, by Dan Cupper. This article consolidates relevant information from those sources with previously unpublished notes and manuscripts to tell a detailed story of the early years of EBT's southeastern extension.
The first known official EBT reference to what would later become the Shade Gap Railroad appears in notes on the corporate minutes for March 12, 1877, made by George M. Hart in the early 1960's:
"A projected RR from Selinsgrove [on the Susquehanna River,The railroads referenced in this announcement to the EBT Board of Directors were probably the Selinsgrove and North Branch and the Huntingdon, Franklin, and Fulton. According to Taber, those railroads were chartered as follows:
north of Harrisburg, PA] to Hancock, MD. Grading nearly finished
between Selinsgrove and Mifflin [on the Juniata River, east of
Mt. Union]. This will pass Shade Gap -- three miles away. Will
watch if connection will be beneficial."
HF&F had "no record of incorporation. However, [it is] listedThe EBT's plans for a southeastern extension began soon after the railroad reached Rockhill. According to Hart's notes, on January 12, 1878 the EBT directors appointed a committee to study the feasibility of a branch to Shade Gap. But three years passed before, on May 24, 1881, they authorized President William A. Ingham to secure a right of way for a railroad from Rockhill to Burnt Cabins and to conduct a survey. This act resulted in a very busy six months for Mr. Ingham and his engineers. Quoting form the corporate minutes, Hart transcribed this report:
in the Department of Internal Affairs Report for 1877.
Mifflintown, Juniata County to Hancock, MD -- 82 miles.S&NB was "incorporated May 3, 1871. Port Treverton to
Selinsgrove, 7 miles with 31 mile branch -- Burns Point
to Mifflintown. Apparently, did some grading and issued
bonds. Poors 1883 last entry saying leased to the Susque-
hanna Southwestern RR (Beach Creek RR -- NYC.)
Proposed extension of our road is exciting. On May 13thIngham estimated the distance to Shade Gap village as 10 miles, and from there to Burnt Cabins was another eight miles following Trout Run to the west of present-day U.S. Highway 522. From Burnt Cabins his reconnaissance led six miles southeast along the western shoulder of Tuscarora Mountain, following the South Branch of Little Aughwick Creek up Allens Valley, to Cowans Gap. The final leg descended into Path Valley and continued south another six miles to Ft. Loudon, at the eastern foot of Tuscarora Mountain and the southern end of Path Valley.
[1881], a party crossed the country from Loudon on the South
Penn RR in the Cumberland Valley via Cowans Gap, Burnt Cabins,
and Shade Gap to Rockhill. The country between CG [Cowans Gap]
and Rockhill will admit of a cheap line and good grades. East
of Cowans Gap for five miles the descent into [Path Valley]
will be costly.I have tried to obtain survey made by Mr. Mifflin ten years
ago without getting track of it. There are three of four
competitors out for trade in the Cumberland Valley -- The
Cumberland Valley RR and the Western Maryland RR [later
reorganized as Western Maryland Railway] to name two -- and
the Peach Bottom RR is contemplating extension from York to
Shippensburg. It would be to our advantage to build to
connect with all three.
On July 19, 1881, the corporate minutes recorded that the survey of the Shade Gap branch had begun. Cowans Gap was then considered to be the key point and the EBT was coordinating with both the Cumberland Valley RR and Western Maryland. By the Turn of the Nineteenth Century the two later lines would be embroiled in a vindictive struggle for control of the coal traffic through the Cumberland Valley.
By September, 1881 a 4.73 mile route was marked to Shade Gap and crews were at work staking out the route from there to Burnt Cabins. New iron ore deposits had been discovered and the only question -- admittedly a big one -- was how the EBT would raise the estimated $150,000 needed to complete the extension as far as Cowans Gap. On November 15 the directors approved the final leg of the survey to Cowans Gap; they had entered into an agreement with the Cumberland Valley RR to meet its survey there. But it would be three more years before anything more was done along this line and the impetus would come from a decidedly different quarter.
The EBT's plans for a connection with the Cumberland Valley RR came to naught. About 1871, the CVRR (controlled by the Pennsylvania RR, with which the EBT already connected at Mt. Union) had organized the Southern Pennsylvania Railway & Mining Company to tap iron ore deposits in Cowans Gap. The CVRR financed construction of SPR&M's line from Marion Junction, seven miles south of Chambersburg, PA on its mainline, through the Franklin County villages of Lemasters, Williamson, and Ft. Loudon to Richmond Furnace, site of a defunct iron furnace operation. From there, track was eventually laid west onto the east slope of Tuscarora Mountain. For a time, significant amounts of ore was shipped out, but this traffic was sporadic after 1875 and seems to have ceased during 1880. Then, in 1882, a report by the Pennsylvania State Geological Survey showed the iron ore deposits in the area of Cowans Gap to be "worthless." Thus ended the EBT's ambitions in that direction.
Later in 1882 the Shade Gap extension got a new lease on life when the New York Central began surveying a southern route from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh under an old charter for the Harrisburg and Western Railroad. The EBT's directors noted that "a connection via Shade Gap with this new road (to be called the South Penn) would shorten the distance from Orbisonia to New York City by 43 miles, to Harrisburg by 28 miles, Philadelphia by 24 miles, and Baltimore by 50 miles." The events surrounding this battle in the perennial war between the giant NYC and PRR systems are well covered in Rainey's & Kyper'sEast Broad Top. Of immediate concern to the EBT was the South Penn's construction of a mile-long tunnel through Tuscarora Mountain, the west portal of which was located near Burnt Cabins on the EBT's surveyed route to Cowans Gap, and another through Sideling Hill to the southwest.
Recognizing that the tunnel projects and grading would require huge quantities of construction materials, EBT's directors moved quickly to exploit the opportunity by incorporating the Shade Gap Railroad. The route followed the original survey through Blacklog Narrows and up Shade Creek, but now passed about 1/2 mile northeast of Shade Gap village, thence southeast to Neelyton. From Neelyton, the survey crews located a route south along the North Branch of Little Aughwick Creek, then east through broken terrain to a point about 1/2 mile from the east portal of the South Penn's Tuscarora Tunnel. A long trestle was required to carry the SGRR tracks from there to the tunnel.
In December, 1883, the EBT assumed operating amd maintenance responsibilities for the SGRR, which never owned any engines or rolling stock of its own. The EBT expected RI&C's annual tonnage on the line, alone, to produce at least $9000 in revenue. Two events point to possible plans to eventually broaden the SGRR to standard gauge. In November, 1883 the EBT's South Penn committee recommended that the track be "laid down as narrow gauge, but [with] masonry for standard gauge." The track, laid between September 16 and December 16, 1884, was 56 pounds per yard, the general weight of standard gauge rail and heavier than any rail on the EBT mainline at that time. Tolls ranging from 1 cent per ton mile for the length of the road up to 2 cents per ton mile for distances less than five miles were to be charged and the EBT was to receive 70% of gross passenger receipts on the SGRR.
On January 12, 1885, the directors were informed that the "first division of the Shade Gap RR [had] been completed and opened for traffic from Rockhill Gap to Shade Gap. And the greater portion of the grading on the balance of the road to the junction with the South Penn [was] done."
Construction supplies moved by wagon from Shade Gap to the tunnel site. Ralph Miller was a former resident of Neelyton who actually worked on the construction crews who extended the Shade Gap branch from Shade Gap to Neelyton in 1907. According to Mr. Miller in an interview recorded by the Friends of the East Broad Top,
"The grade was finished and bridges built for the fullApparently, the profits expected from hauling construction materials did not materialize because of a lack of return traffic. In April, the directors were informed of an operating cost deficit caused by "the inconvenience of starting every train out to Shade Gap to make a return connection at Rockhill." The bottom fell out four months later when, on August 18, work on the the South Penn RR was stopped. Wall Street financier J. P. Morgan had brokered a peace between the warring titans. In exchange for PRR stopping construction of a line up the Hudson River, NYC agreed to sell the PRR its rights to the South Penn charter. Although the EBT still hoped for an extension of the Cumberland Valley over the mountain at Cowans Gap, the CVRR had by this time dropped all plans for extending the SPR&M line (later known as the South Penn Branch) beyond Richmond Furnace, except to serve lumbering operations on the east slope of Tuscarora Mountain. Plans to lay track the SGRR south of Shade Gap were suspenced. Timbers for the SGRR's long trestle north of Burnt Cabins were scavenged for fire wood by local residents and the smaller bridges between Neelyton and the end of grade slowly rotted away.
length of the extension. Most bridges were stone abutments
with timber supports but there were some arches (I saw one
just north of Burnt Cabins). There were no heavy grades."[One man] remember[ed] his father telling him about hauling
timbers for the trestle at Burnt Cabins on the graded right
of way with a team of horses and a flat sled. The bridges
had been covered with planks for the horses but one went
through breaking a leg and had to be shot. His father was
paid $1.50 for a ten hour day for himself and team of horses."
Following the South Penn affair, the EBT focused on developing iron ore traffic closer to home on the SGRR, which combined with the RI&C Co. to extend tracks north of Shade Gap station along the eastern flank of Shade Mountain. Eventually, the Shade Valley Branch was eight miles long and served six ore mines. From south to north, these were:
Name Year Distance from Shade Gap Station Robinson 1885 adjacent Sherrer 1886 1/2 mile Starr 1887 2 miles Goshorn 1888 4 miles Nancy 1890 5.8 miles Richvale 1890 8 miles
Limestone for the Rockhill Furnace came from Grove's Quarry, near the confluence of Blacklog and Shade creeks, and iron ore continued to flow from the McCarthy mine in Blacklog Narrows.
From 1885 to 1908 the fortunes of the Shade Gap Railroad followed those of the RI&C Co. Numerous schemes for railroads along the general lines of the SGRR's grade south of Neelyton came and went (the 3-foot gauge Tuscarora Valley RR actually graded a line from Blairs Mills to Burnt Cabins in 1898), but all went the way of the South Penn. Incidentally, the South Penn project was brought back to life, briefly, between 1888 and 1896 -- this time it was war between the PRR and an alliance of the Reading Co. and the Western Maryland -- but the SGRR and parent EBT took no action. A note in the directors' record for February 28, 1888 provides telling commentary on their state of mind:
"The renewal of work on the South Penn RR, which is promised positively, will make it advisable to complete the unfinished portion of the Shade Gap RR -- but after our unhappy experience it seems better to wait a while longer."
Indeed, in 1886 the treasurer had reported that, before the EBT stopped work beyond Shade Gap, "some $60,000 had been expended, which appears lost," requiring "revision of the tripartite expenses between EBT, SGRR, and RI&C -- sharing the loss." Struggling to make ends meet in the aftermath of the Panic of 1893, the EBT had to be content with gleaning what revenue it could from on line sources.
Any record of operations on the SGRR after July, 1885 (if such a record exists) lies out of public view in Orbisonia Station, but Lee Rainey"s "The EBT in the Iron Age, Part I: History and Traffic", RMC, March, 1990 provides a well thought out estimate of traffic through the end of the Rockhill company's blast furnace operations in 1908. The EBT operated 3 trains a day between Rockhill and Shade Gap. Iron ore, of course, flowed from the Shade Valley mines until a labor dispute idled the Rockhill Furnace in 1893. Rainey estimates that up to 160 tons of fossil ore per day, primarily from the Shade Valley mines, were delivered to the furnace in the years prior to 1890. This would require 19 of the wooden hoppers then used by the EBT.
Lumber, ties, shingles, barrel staves, and bark moved in either direction on the SGRR. Rainey cites sawmills of varying size operating all along the line, including a water-powered mill at Locke Valley, and Peterson & Co., of Neelyton, reportedly shipped up to 10,000 shingles a day from Shade Gap. The Board of Directors' minutes reveal that the lumber trade on the SGRR was especially heavy during its early years, so much so that the directors considered a "prohibitory tarrif on railroad ties due to depletion of timber" in 1887. Rainey further notes that bark for making tannic acid was loaded at the Nancy mine spur in 1895 and may have been consigned to the Minnic tannery in Shade Gap. That plant also received raw hides via the EBT's interchange with the PRR in Mt. Union. Beelman's coal delivery trestle at Shade Gap and the Neelyton Supply Co. trestle received shipments from the RI&C's cleaning and washing facility at Robertsdale (this was before the new facility was built at Mt. Union during World War I). Farming accounted for most of the remaining freight traffic on the SGRR: cattle and flour out, lime and fertilizer in.
A new passenger coach and combine arrived in December 1885 from the EBT's "old friends and stockholders, Billmeyer and Smalls" to provide twice-daily round trip passenger service between Rockhill and Starr. As the iron mining operations expanded on the Shade Valley Branch (or Shade Gap ore extension), the SGRR's passenger volume and revenues increased significantly. Passenger shelters were erected in 1887 at Cedar Rock and Locke Valley, between Blacklog and Shade Gap, and receipts that year -- predominantly from 10 cent round trip miners's fares -- increased by $2550 over those for 1886. Indeed, traffic was heavy enough that, on May 24, 1887, the EBT's superintendent recommended the purchase of another locomotive "as the Shade Gap branch require[d] the whole time of one engine. In response, the EBT purchased its first ten wheeler, No. 8 ("Tuscarora"). It was less powerful than the low-drivered 2-8-0 Consolidations that hauled the coal on the mainline, but its 48-inch drivers were less prone to sliipping.
At Goshorn's, the SGRR assumed the cost of construction of a new passenger station, freight house, and water station and for putting up telephone wire in April 1888. This work was completed by January 1889. Apparently, the Goshorn family was granted the right to establish a general store in the building serving as passenger station.
On May 30, 1893 the Rockhill furnace operation closed due to a strike and the down-turn of iron business caused by the Panic of 1893. Shade Valley ore mining was suspended, never to be resumed, resulting in a reported loss of 2000 tons per month from ore traffic. The following year, 1894, was the "most disastrous year in [EBT's] history."
1/14/1895: "Shade Gap RR previously earned about $200 perSuperintendent Alfred W. Simms got his way. Trains apparently continued to run on the SGRR between Rockhill and Starr until his death in April, 1895, when passenger service was eliminated north of Shade Gap. Within two years the tracks north of Goshorn's (owned by the RI&C, not the SGRR) were taken up. The Rockhill furnace resumed production in 1902 and plans were made to reopen the ore mine at Nancy. But the RI&C was not able to negotiate new ore leases with local landowners and the entire Shade Valley Branch was dismantled soon after December 1904.
month but since Rockhill Furnace went out and the fossil
ore mines were closed we now operate at a loss of $200 per
month. We now have under consideration the abandonment of
the branch and forteiture of the lease."1/22/1895: "Superintendent is opposed to abandoning the SGRR.
Losses about $110 per month -- require 10,000 new ties at 18
cents each. Committee appointed on the subject of abandonment."
So, the Shade Gap Railroad's early years ended with the line cut back to its original extent. Traffic was limited to mixed freight and, presumably, scheduled passenger service. Clearly, the SGRR was never more than a feeder line, and with the loss of ore traffic it must have been a marginal operation at best. A report of May 26, 1904 noted that "the Shade Gap RR operated for the past five years with gains and losses about balancing. Repairs [were] needed to one of the bridges, however [probably the iron deck truss over Shade Creek], and the lease should be reconsidered." However, a contradictory report on March 9, 1907 claimed that the SGRR had "not earned its operating expenses since 1893." Nevertheless, the EBT continued to operate trains on the 4.7-mile line to Shade Gap throughout that period (with the possible exception of 1895-96). The coming of new management to the EBT, in 1908, would bring more ups and downs to the SGRR.
Part 2 of this article will cover the extension of the SGRR to Neelyton in 1907 - 08 through it's demise in the late 1940's.
Back to The East Broad Top Page