Pete and Jane Clark’s East Broad Top Railroad
by
Brian W. Sheron
Despite
the snow a few days before, Sunday, January 29th, turned out to be a
reasonably nice day with sunshine and above freezing temperatures. And
that was enough for a hardly cadre of Potomac Division members and
friends to come out and visit Pete and Jane Clark’s East Broad Top
(EBT) Railroad.
Occupying
about a 15’ x 20’ room in their basement, the EBT is an HO scale narrow
gauge railroad empire set in 1925 Pennsylvania. Focused mostly on coal
operations, the EBT primarily depicts coal being picked up at the mines
and transported to the mills.
The
layout is essentially completely scenicked, with a few areas still
requiring some detail to be added. Pete said that while he handles some
of the chores like wiring, Jane is the “artist” who builds the
structures and other scenery, including most of the trees.
The
Clark’s said they started the layout in1992, an had most of it
completed within about 4-5 years. Since then, they said that they’ve
made some additions to it, and several areas were torn out and redone.
The
layout is powered by Digitrax with a combination of tethered and
wireless controllers. The Clark’s belong to an operations group, and it
is evident from the many car-card holders placed around the layout.
It
is truly a beauiful, well made and well scenicked model railroad
empire, and the visitors that came out and saw it on that Sunday were
certainly not disappointed
Jalbum 8.2