Huntingdon and Broad Top Mountain Railroad
Huntingdon and Broad Top Mountain Railroad (AAR reporting mark HBTM) is a former short line railroad company operating passenger and freight service on standard gauge track in south central Pennsylvania. Headquarters were in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania and later in Saxton, Pennsylvania. The main shop and engine house was located in Saxton, Pennsylvania.
The Huntingdon and Broad Top Mountain Railroad and Coal Company was chartered on May 6, 1852 and organized on January 10, 1853. The purpose of the line was to provide a rail link from Huntingdon, Pennsylvania to Bedford, Pennsylvania, and to provide a competitive alternate route to local coal producers to break the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad's local monopoly. The existence of high quality semi-bituminous coal in the Broad Top Mountain region was known since colonial times. Before the railroad, wagon or pole barge was the only practical method of bringing the coal to market.
The 31-mile portion of the main line from Huntingdon to Hopewell was completed in 1855. The line later extended to Saxton and Riddlesburg, where several branch lines went into the coal fields. It was eventually extended to Mount Dallas, where it connected with the Bedford and Bridgeport Road, a major connecter to the Cumberland coal region. The carrier acquired through merger, on August 17, 1864, the Bedford Railroad Company, giving access to Bedford, Pennsylvania. The H&BTM connected with the Pennsylvania Railroad at Huntingdon and Mount Dallas, PA. Total track mileage at the company's height was just over 72 miles.
The railroad was at is height in the last decades of the 19th and first decades of the 20th century, but increasing competition from the major carriers and the decline of the Broad Top Mountain coal fields took its toll. The Huntingdon and Broad Top Mountain Railroad declared bankruptcy on October 11, 1953 and ceased operations in 1954. A small tourist excursion line called the Everett Railroad operated H&BTMRR's #11 steam locomotive on a 5 mile (8 km) stretch of former H&BTMRR track from Everett to Mt. Dallas until the early 1970s.
One of the last remaining operational H&BTMRR's locomotives, "Old #38," a Baldwin Locomotive Works 2–8–0 Consolidation, is on display at the Rail City Historical Museum in Sandy Creek, New York. A tender, several coaches, and some tools were also acquired and preserved by the museum. Other surviving non-operational steam locomotives from the line include #39, an 0–4–0 on display in Dudley, Pennsylvania and #11, a 2–6–2 Prairie type on display in Everett, Pennsylvania.