A replica passenger car of the Switchback Railroad that was built in Summit Hill will be dedicated on Saturday.

The dedication will occur at 11 a.m. at the site of the former Switchback Depot, 37 W. Ludlow St., Summit Hill.

This is where the reconstructed car will be permanently located.

The car was constructed by David Hiles, Louis Vermillion, Bobby Henninger, Tom Midas and John Kupec. Lettering was done by Gerri Gardiner. The project began last fall.

Hiles said the car is a replica of an early passenger car on the Switchback and was built off pictures contained in a book by Vincent Hydro titled Vincent Hydro titled “The Mauch Chunk Switchback: America’s Pioneer Railroad.” It was built from plywood, with a steel frame containing angle wire.

The car measures about 8 feet long and 4 feet wide.

“It’s slightly smaller than the original Switchback cars,” said Vermillion. He said some of the earlier cars on the Switchback Railroad were converted coal cars.

The car holds special importance to Henninger.

He said his father, the late Gordon Henninger, helped to tear up the tracks of the railroad after it shut down in 1932.

“If he were here, he’d be smiling,” Henninger said of his father.

He said the metal from the Switchback was sold as scrap to the former Weiner Scrapyard in Pottsville, and then sold to Japan.

Japan used scrap metal to build its war machine that attacked the United States in 1941.

“We got it back at Pearl Harbor,” he said.

Wheels for the Switchback car were donated for the project by Andy Muller, owner of the Reading Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad, after being contacted by Kupec.

The Switchback is considered Pennsylvania’s first railway and the nation’s second. It was used for hauling coal from 1827 to 1932, with its length being nine miles.

The Great Depression is blamed for the demise of the Switchback.

A coal car replica, not connected with this project, sits at the corner of Ludlow Street and Pine Street.