Bellefonte Central Rail Trail

The Bellefonte Central Rail Trail follows the old Bellefonte Central Railroad grade out of State College, starting at Sunset Park on McKee Street and running west through Big Hollow in The Arboretum at Penn State. The improved section is a crushed limestone path through woods that opens to fields and pastoral views. Past the Mount Nittany Expressway overpasses the trail turns informal and rougher, passing behind the Toftrees golf course and neighborhoods to an unmarked end at Montauk Circle. The grade climbs gently and steadily westward, never more than about one and a half percent. Expect an easy out and back on the arboretum section and a more challenging adventure beyond it.

• The first train over the new branch into the Pennsylvania State College campus ran on April 2, 1892.
• The line was chartered in 1882 as the Bellefonte and Buffalo Run Railroad by Philip and Thomas Collins to haul iron ore to Bellefonte Furnace.
• Bellefonte Furnace went into blast in 1888 and shut down only three years later, yet the railroad outlived it by nine decades.
• For most of its life the railroad hauled coal for the college power plant along with passengers and small freight.
• Scheduled passenger service ended in 1946, but the last passenger train ran in 1964, a Pennsylvania Railroad special from Pittsburgh for the Pitt versus Penn State football game.
• By the twentieth century the Bellefonte Central hauled more than 100,000 tons of limestone and lime a year, and in 1937 the Chemical Lime Company opened a plant with a 400 foot rotary kiln, then the longest in the nation.
• Thirteen miles of rail were pulled up between State College and Chemical in 1976.
• The last mile of track from Bellefonte to Coleville survives and is run by the Nittany and Bald Eagle Railroad.
• A 2008 county feasibility study proposed a fourteen mile trail linking Bellefonte and State College and projected 429,000 trips a year by 50,000 trail users.

Philip and Thomas Collins chartered this line in 1882 to haul iron ore from the pits along Buffalo Run to their Bellefonte Furnace. Grading began in Bellefonte in 1883 and worked southwest through Waddle and Alto to Struble. A merger in 1885 renamed the company the Buffalo Run, Bellefonte and Bald Eagle Railroad. The furnace went into blast in 1888 and shut down three years later. In 1892 the road reorganized as the Bellefonte Central Railroad and opened a branch to the Pennsylvania State College. The first train reached campus on April 2, 1892. From then on the railroad lived off the college, carrying students, less than carload freight, and coal for the campus power plant, while limestone and lime from the Bellefonte end grew into the main cargo. The line west of State College to Stover was abandoned in 1941. Scheduled passenger service ended in 1946. The last train left State College on July 22, 1974, and thirteen miles of rail were pulled up two years later. The company filed to abandon the rest in 1984, leaving only a mile at Bellefonte in service. The Arboretum at Penn State took in the grade through Big Hollow and opened it as a rail trail on May 22, 2006. Two years later Centre County published a feasibility study for a fourteen mile trail between Bellefonte and State College, with a Montauk Circle extension and a Toftrees phase. Today an informal continuation follows the old grade toward Waddle.

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• Pennsylvania DCNR · Bellefonte Central Rail Trail
• Wikipedia · Bellefonte Central Railroad
• Centre County Historical Society · Bellefonte Central Railroad
• Centre County · Benefits of the Bellefonte Central Rail Trail (Feasibility Study executive summary insert, 2008)
• ExplorePAhistory · Bellefonte Central Rail Trail
• Abandoned Rails · The Bellefonte Central Railroad
• Centre County · Bellefonte Central Rail Trail