STEAMING PAST AUTUMN FOLIAGE ON TWO VINTAGE EXCURSION TRAINS

In remote, rural Huntingdon County, Aughwick Creek meanders through cow pastures and brushes up against mountains with tough, gritty names--Backlog, Jacks and, beyond that, Broad Top, once rich in coal. Nestled in this south-central Pennsylvania valley with its little river is a railroad, also little, called East Broad Top. Narrow gauge and just 33 miles long, the railroad is a remarkable survivor from the age of steam, iron and coal. By a kind of miracle, East Broad Top, which opened in 1873, is almost perfectly preserved, as if in amber.

On a brisk October day, pale sun slants into the hollows and highlights the reds and yellows of oaks and maples on the hills around Rockhill Furnace, which stands on the banks of the Aughwick (pronounced OG-wik) and is the railroad’s headquarters town. Fog burns off as the morning warms, but fragrant coal smoke lingers, drifting from the stacks of a quartet of steam locomotives, all moving smartly about a yard and shop complex roughly a century old.

The East Broad Top’s Fall Spectacular is about to begin. An annual celebration of vintage railroading, the event is a two-day, three-ring circus of steam, played out against a backdrop of brilliant autumn foliage. The railroad operates on weekends all summer long and into the fall. But once a year, on the Saturday and Sunday of Columbus Day weekend (Oct. 11 and 12 this year), comes the Spectacular, which is not an overstatement.

On these occasions, a dozen trains run each day. There are passenger trains and freight trains, with cabooses and gondolas you can ride in. And, in the last few years, “coal trains” (rebuilt hopper cars, sans the actual cargo) have been added, recreating the EBT’s days as a common carrier. Some trains run “doubleheaded,” with two locomotives. The colorful hills are alive with the sound of whistling. For photographers, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.

The engines, all built by the Baldwin Locomotive Co. during the early 1900s, are elegantly tricked out and brightly buffed-up for the occasion: shiny black boilers, wheels lined in white, the letters “E.B.T.” writ large in orange across the flanks of the tenders. Through four decades these engines mostly toted black hopper cars heaped with coal from the rich Broad Top field. For the last 37 years they’ve hauled only people--casual tourists out for a train ride, picnickers, rail buffs and industrial archeologists seeking a window on the past.

On a chilly October morning, the coal-burning stove imparts a welcome and fragrant warmth to the interior of an ancient wooden coach that once carried lunch-pail-toting miners to work at Robertsdale. When the EBT bought the car in 1916, it was already well used. Outside, late-boarding passengers--women and men, boys and girls, none smudged with coal as their predecessors might have been--scurry across the cobblestone platform in front of the handsome clapboard depot; built in 1907, it once housed the railroad’s general offices upstairs. (Though it actually stands in Rockhill Furnace, the station is called Orbisonia, the name of the larger town just across the Aughwick River.)

At the rear of the train is the parlor car that came to the EBT in 1907 (again, secondhand) to serve as the railroad president’s private car. Now anyone can ride in its wicker chairs for a $1 surcharge. Up ahead is locomotive No. 12, wreathed in steam. Two hoots of the whistle and the train is off on its 10-mile round trip to Colgate Grove. Wheels rumble on rail beneath ancient floorboards, and wood creaks as the coach rolls north. Coal smoke wafts through the open doors of the baggage compartment. Views are bucolic, with small farmhouses dotting a landscape of fields, all against a backdrop of mountains ablaze with fiery fall colors.

Back at the Orbisonia depot, the social side of the Spectacular is in full swing. The event has much the community feel of a county fair, with Boy Scouts stirring up a big, black kettle of ham and bean soup and selling hot dogs. A church group offers 10 varieties of pies and other baked goods and sandwiches, while local farmers sell apples and cider.

Though the first train doesn’t leave until 9:30 a.m., it’s worth arriving hours earlier, before the crowds, to watch the time-honored rituals of steam railroading played out at a measured pace. Some devotees even turn up the afternoon before to be on hand as the four locomotives undergo the magical transformation from cold, inert steel to living machine. One of the great charms of the EBT is that the public is invited in to watch this sooty, real work of railroading, still done in the original way in the original place. The doors to the eight-stall brick roundhouse are open, both literally and figuratively.

Fire in their bellies, steam in their boilers, the locomotives roll one at a time onto the Armstrong turntable (rotated not by machine but by strong arms pushing), then chuff through the sprawling shop complex, a wonderfully vast rabbit warren of red wooden buildings: blacksmith shop, foundry, car shop, boiler shop, machine shop, lumber shed, carpenter shop.

They have a ghostly quality, these shops still full of lathes, drills and other far more arcane machinery, everything required to build freight cars and repair locomotives. All is deep in dust. Ceilings are spider-webbed with sagging leather belts that once connected this machinery to the coal-fired stationary steam engine that brought the shops to life. (Guided tours of the shop interiors are offered only on the weekend of the Spectacular.)

It’s as if the workers--machinists, boiler men, carpenters, painters--all just laid down their tools, padlocked the doors and left. Which is close to what happened back in 1956 when, with local coal resources depleted, the railroad shut down. By all rights it should have been torn down and hauled away, as so many other obsolete railroads have been. But a quirky miracle saved it.

Chartered in 1856, the East Broad Top Railroad and Coal Co. didn’t open for business until 1873. An old farm in Rockhill Furnace was taken over for the railroad’s yards, shops and operating headquarters. (An 1867 stone farmhouse became the shop office and still stands today.)

Though the area was once a major iron producer, it was not until the furnaces’ demise in the early years of this century that EBT entered its heyday, since coal-hauling prospered even as iron declined. Then, in the mid-50s, the coal business hit the skids, too, and the railroad closed.

The entire property, basically an intact 1920s railroad, was bought by Kovalchick Salvage Company (Pennsylvania’s largest scrap dealer, already owner of 23 mining towns). Virtually nothing was scrapped, however. At Rockhill Furnace, and all along the 33 miles of track from Mt. Union to Robertsdale, Woodvale and Alvan, deep in the coal fields, through Saltillo and Three Springs, the railroad slept undisturbed.

In 1960, the kiss of awakening came from the city fathers of Orbisonia, who wondered if the late Nick Kovalchick, the salvage company’s founder and then president, would agree to fire up an engine and run excursions for the town’s bicentennial celebration. He did, and trains have been running summers ever since.

Now, as the fall of 1997 approaches, the EBT is at something of a crossroads. A federal regional commission, deeply interested in the railroad, has recommended a far-reaching preservation and rehabilitation plan that would include reopening the entire 30 miles of railroad, from Mt. Union to Robertsdale (including 25 miles dormant since 1956) and stabilizing structures. Most important would be the irreplaceable shop complex, which could then be opened for regular visitation. In July 1994, $30 million in economic redevelopment bonds were authorized for public acquisition and rehabilitation of the railroad, but as of now the money has not been appropriated, leaving everything on hold.

Meanwhile, the peripheral resources that the Kovalchicks acquired with the EBT 40 years ago and have progressively liquidated to support operation of the railroad are played out. Nick’s son, Joe, has been as loyal to the railroad as his father was, but unless the authorized funding actually arrives soon, it may be too late. Recognizing this, the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1996 included the EBT on its list of most endangered historic properties.

“If we blow the chance to save the EBT,” says Bill Withuhn, the Smithsonian Institution’s curator of transportation, “it would be like bulldozing Mt. Vernon.”

Whatever happens, there can be no better time to visit the East Broad Top than now, with its friendly country informality intact. This remarkable artifact of the industrial era, since 1964 a National Historic Landmark, speaks with unique eloquence of trains, iron and coal--and of the men who ran them, forged it and mined it.

At noon on Saturday of the Fall Spectacular, these men and women--and particularly Nick Kovalchick and his wife, Fannie--are all remembered with a whistle salute. In the last minutes of morning, the four locomotives under steam are marshaled in a row. Conductors in dark uniforms with brass buttons stand at attention, traditional badged hats held over their hearts.

On the stroke of 12 a gloved hand pulls one whistle cord, and a sweet, melancholy sound echoes off the mountainside. Another chimes in, of different timbre, then another, then the fourth--old No. 17, the shrillest, most insistent of the lot--making a quartet of unique voices blended into one spine-tingling memorial chorus.

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GUIDEBOOK: Pennsylvania Choo-Choo

Getting there: The East Broad Top Railroad lies in south-central Pennsylvania. Fly into Pittsburgh and rent a car for the three-hour drive to Orbisonia, or connect in Pittsburgh to a commuter plane to Martinsburg (cars can also be rented here), 23 miles from Orbisonia. US Airways offers nonstop service to Pittsburgh; round-trip fares begin at $538. American, United, Delta, Continental and Northwest have connecting service only.

Riding the East Broad Top Railroad: Trains operate Saturdays and Sundays at least through Oct. 19, with trains leaving the Orbisonia depot (Rockhill Furnace) at 11 a.m. and 1 and 3 p.m. for 50-minute round-trips to Colgate Grove. Fares last year were $9 for adults, $6 for children 2-11. EBT’s Fall Spectacular will be held Oct. 11 and 12, with trains running throughout both days, about 25 in all.

Also at Orbisonia is the Rockhill Trolley Museum, owned and operated by Railways to Yesterday. Restored trolleys run over a short stretch of track laid on the EBT’s former Shade Gap Branch. Fare is $3 for adults, $1 for children.

Where to stay: There is no place to stay in Orbisonia, but there are a number of unexceptional motels at the rather unattractive Breezeway Interchange on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. One source of area lodging information is the Raystown Country Visitor Bureau; telephone (888) RAYSTOWN, or (814) 643-3577, or visit the Web site at https://www.raystown.org.

For more information: For railroad information, contact the EBT; tel. (814) 447-3011 (they also will help with lodging suggestions. Or call the Pennsylvania Bureau of Travel Marketing, 453 Forum Building, Room 400, Harrisburg, PA 17120; tel. (800) 237-4363 or (717) 787-5453.