Thanks to grants from the Friends of the East Broad Top and an anonymous donor, a professional archivist and an intern are spending this summer establishing a plan to catalog and preserve the East Broad Top Railroad’s vast archival holdings. But the effort will take years to complete, and the railroad’s new owner, the EBT Foundation, Inc., will need to raise money to pay for it while also rebuilding locomotives, coaches, and track.

Julie K. Rockwell, of Huntingdon, Pa., will lead the project. She recently completed a master’s-degree program in museum studies and digital archiving offered by the Johns Hopkins University. Samuel Bellin, a Juniata College senior from Pittsburgh who is majoring in history, is the archives intern.

The first task facing Ms. Rockwell and Mr. Bellin is just to estimate the size and condition of the railroad’s holdings. Three fireproof brick vaults within the Orbisonia station are filled from floor to 12-foot ceiling with property records, ledger books dating to the 19th century, and decades’ worth of maps and drawings from the railroad’s engineering oce. Dozens of file cabinets and blueprint drawers hold all manner of additional material.

-via Press Release