[PRCo] Re: East Broad Top Railroad won't run this summer | News | CentreDaily.com

[robert netzlof]

> Remember Sloan Cornell's various
> operations?  Penn View Mountain Scenic Railroad ---
> gone ---

Enemy action in that case. The township in which the railroad was located had, sometime in the 19th century, enacted a whopping license fee and gross receipts tax on amusement parks, presumably to discourage the frivolity and licentiousness, not to mention sabbath breaking, attendant on such enterprises. Come the 1960s, the township supervisors dredged up the ordinance, declared the Penn View Mountain to be an amusement park, and sat back to watch the money roll in.

Cornell moved his equipment to a purpose-built shed in Blairsville and entered into discussions with Penn Central to lease the Indiana branch, with a view to becoming a common carrier, and thus not an amusement park. That came to naught, but he was able to obtain trackage at Gettysburg.

> ...the engine went to Gettysburg?

Along with all the rest of his equipment.

> Knox and Kane … I think the scrapping was finished in 2010.

Not quite. There are still quite a few miles of track in situ.

Again, enemy action, this time in the form of a tornado which took down the Kinzua Bridge and a local bad-ass who thought it fun to torch the engine house.

> Gettysburg Railroad …. the boiler explosion resulted in a total
> rewrite of FRA rules for tourist steam railroads

That one must be laid on Cornell or perhaps his son, who was the head cheese at Gettysburg at the time, Sloan having relocated to the Knox and Kane by then. Whether it resulted from poor finances or a poor attitude toward maintenance is debatable.

Omitted from the foregoing is his brief ownership of the former P&E from Johnsonburg to Irvineton, a clear stab at establishing freight service. It may be that Cornell's early bad experience with the township bent his thinking too much toward operating as a common carrier, thus causing resources which could have improved the tourist operation to be diverted into providing for freight service which never quite materialized or evaporated after money had been spent to serve it.

Bob Netzlof a/k/a Sweet Old Bob