In a surprise announcement on May 5, 1899, J. Wesley Gephart, a prominent local businessman and sometime president of the Valentine Iron Company, announced that he had collected New York and Philadelphia capitalists to invest in and restart the furnace.
Because of the removal of the Red Bank Branch in 1896, Bellefonte Furnace initially began receiving ore via a roundabout route, shipping over the Scotia Branch and Fairbrook Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad to Tyrone, and then north over the Bald Eagle Branch to Bellefonte [REF].