Railroad, Trolley Museum | Christmas in Coal Country
Christmas in Coal Country 2020
Children of all ages can bundle up and enjoy train and trolley rides when Santa Claus visits the East Broad Top Railroad (EBT) and the Rockhill Trolley Museum in early December.
The railroad’s station and its train will be beautifully decorated for the Christmas season, as will the trolleys and the trolley museum (across Meadow Street from the EBT station).
The EBT’s red-and-green M-7 diesel will pull the train on a four-mile round trip over the newly refurbished track, then deliver passengers to the trolley museum for a trolley ride out to the Blacklog Narrows. Afterward, passengers can warm up with hot chocolate and a cookie, tour a model railroad, and visit with Santa (at a safe distance, of course).
The event will take place on December 4, 5, 11, and 12, come rain, snow, or sunshine. Tickets include the train and trolley rides, hot chocolate and a cookie, and a chance to say Hi to Santa and visit the model railroad. The tickets are only being sold online here ($25 for adults, $20 for children aged 2 through 12). Friday trains will run at 4, 5, 6, and 7 PM, while Saturday trains will run at 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7 PM.
The East Broad Top Railroad, a National Historic Landmark, is the only original narrow-gauge railroad to survive east of the Rocky Mountains. It was built from 1872 to 1874 to serve a then-new iron furnace, and survived the furnace’s demise by carrying clean-burning Broad Top coal along a 33-mile route from the mines to Mount Union, where the coal could be shipped out on the Pennsylvania Railroad. When the mines closed in 1956, the EBT was sold to the Kovalchick family, which reopened the line as a steam-powered tourist railroad. A new nonprofit foundation acquired the railroad in February 2020, with the intent of preserving and operating it.
The Rockhill Trolley Museum operates over a portion of the EBT’s former Shade Gap Branch. Founded in 1960 to preserve and run historic Pennsylvania trolleys, the all-volunteer museum has assembled an impressive collection of old and modern electric cars.
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