East Broad Top Combine Passenger Car #16
Car Plan
Combine #16 was one of the East Broad Top's earlier cars, very similar in design to combine 17 (disposition unknown) and combine 18 (in Colorado). The car was retired in 1941 and passed through different owners until being purchased by the New Jersey Museum of Transportation's Pine Creek Railroad in Allair State Park, Farmingdale NJ. By the time the car arrived there it was missing it's trucks and had been stored outside for many years. In 1986 FEBT acquired a 99 year lease on EBT combine #16 with the intention of restoring her to operating condition.
At that time Friends will look into moving the car from NJ to Pennsylvania for the remainder of restoration. Cleanup and preliminary restoration has been performed on the car in NJ and many replacement pieces have already been fabricated and await the arrival of the car in PA.
Some preventative maintenence was done on the car and many replacement wood parts for the carbody were fabricated for eventual installation in the car. They are stored in Pennsylvania pending the cars arrival.
Trail Tool Company discovered, once work began, that the journal boxes required far more labor to manufacture than estimated. The more labor-intensive fabrication also required an extra year to complete. Trail Tool, who has manufactured most of the metal components needed for the Combine No. 16 truck frames, readily agreed to accept our payment for the journal boxes in several installments. As authorized by the Board of Directors in November, FEBT Treasurer William T. Wheeler has already transmitted our initial payment of $6,000.00 to Trail Tool. The Board plans to pay the remainder in 2000.
The donations we received from FEBT members in December and January together with an additional donation we will receive in April give us more than half of the funds we will need to pay the remainder of $5,547.00 to be paid to Trail Tool for fabricating the journal boxes for the reproduction trucks for Passenger-Baggage Car No. 16. Based on anticipated contributions to the FEBT Restoration Fund during 2000, FEBT President Hank Inman and Vice President David S. Bucher, who is coordinating the truck project, plan to recommend to the Board of Directors that we not only complete our payment to Trail Tool for these truck components, but that this year FEBT should also obtain the bolster end caps and other minor metal parts needed for the truck frames, start assembly of the reproduction truck frames, and assemble the original truck frames leased from the Tweetsie Railroad (used as patterns for the reproduction trucks) and return them to North Carolina.
In August FEBT forwarded a payment of $2,773.50 to Trail Tool for the fabrication of the journal boxes for the reproduction trucks we are constructing for use under Combine No. 16. With this second payment we have paid $8,773.50 of the total cost of $11,545.00 for these truck parts. Using funds now on hand and end-of-the-year donations to the FEBT Restoration Fund we hope to forward the final payment for the journal boxes to Trail Tool early next year.
FEBT director David S. Bucher, who has coordinated our work on the reproduction truck project, reports that he has started exploratory discussions with the Strasburg Railroad about contracted work related to the trucks and our restoration of the combination baggage-passenger car to operating condition.
The journal boxes are the last major component we need to obtain for the frames of our combine's "new" trucks, which are reproductions of original truck-frames from former EBT coach no. 5, now owned by the Tweetsie Railroad at Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Not including a performance bond and lease payments to the Tweetsie Railroad for the trucks we are using as the pattern for our reproduction truck frames, we have since starting work in 1993 spent a total of $19,730.63 for reproduction truck components; an additional $2,557.82 was used to transport the leased truck frames from North Carolina to Maryland and to disassemble and clean parts from the pattern truck frames. The parts from the original trucks were then used by our contractors to manufacture the reproduction parts we need to put wheels underneath a restored combine no. 16. Some additional minor parts will be required to assemble the reproduction truck frames, but these small metal pieces can be fabricated when we assemble the truck frames. Putting together this full-size kit of truck components, then, is the next step we need to address as we continue to work toward a fully-restored combine no. 16, returned to operation on the East Broad Top Railroad.
