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The Erie Lackawanna was the first railroad that I remember. My father used to commute on them from Lincoln Park, NJ to NYC and back. My Mom would take me down to the station to pick him up and remember the big U34CH locos painted in the EL/NJDOT black paint scheme with the red EL logo on the front.

The favourite railroad of one of my best friends back in the old country, Sweden....he's as obsessed with DL&W, Erie and Erie Lackawanna as I'm obsessed with Milwaukee Road! Keep 'em videos coming! 🤜🏻🤛🏻🍻 Greetings from a Swede in Glasgow, Scotland!

Really enjoyed this video awesome stuff. My grandfather worked for the Erie Lackawanna from the beginning until the end at the Conrail merger he decided to retire. Along with a couple other RRs before that. He's passed on now but we keep it alive, Him and the EL, have a model railroad dedicated to the EL along with tons of stuff he left us from his days on the rail. It's a part of history that a day doesn't go by that I don't think about.

I appreciate how your videos go in depth into the operational and management sides of these famous railroads instead of just their main lines and rolling stock. Not too many videos cover this vital portion of the railroad, as well as the various possibilities of what could have been, especially with the Chessie attempting to acquire EL. I also never knew the Erie Western existed either. Looks like a pretty interesting shortline, with designs reminiscent of present day grain plant operators.

One of my cats is called Chessie. She is an evil genius. Your quotes about Chessie being awkward and difficult are scarily accurate.

Nice job on the history of the E-L merger. Hurricane Agnes and the labor union issue were the two final nails in the coffin. My Dad worked at the E-L (formerly Erie) Repair Shops in Hornell, NY. The first thing ConRail did when they took over on April 1, 1976 was to announce the closure of the Shops, which devastated the local economy. Later, General Electric moved in for four years, so many former E-L employees (like my Dad) who decided not to take the offer to transfer to the ConRail Altoona, PA Repair Shops, were able to return to work. After GE left, Morrison-Knudsen moved in. Now Alstom is building the next generation Amtrak Acela units, continuing the railroad tradition in the area.

I'm so glad you did a video on the E-L merger. I went to college in Scranton, PA, and hometown railroad DL&W has been my favorite ever since. E-L had the best chance of escaping the fate of all northeast railroads in the 60s and 70s in my opinion, and the fact that it couldn't shows you how much it was up against. All the former anthracite-hauling roads (DL&W, Erie, D&H, Lehigh Valley, Reading, Jersey Central) were already facing an existential crisis well before the 1950s as people switched from anthracite to oil and gas for home heating, causing their main source of revenue to wither. All of their routes paralleled each other, and several (particularly the Erie, DL&W, and Jersey Central) were saddled with money-losing-but-essential commuter operations near NYC. The boom in traffic caused by WWII granted only a temporary reprieve. Then came the 1950s and the rise of new modes of competition in the form of government-subsidized projects like the Interstate Highway system, FAA-run airways and government-built airports, and the St. Lawrence Seaway (this allowed greater shipping traffic to Chicago via the Great Lakes, bypassing eastern railroads entirely). The ICC's outdated regulations and the fact that, in contrast to the completely subsidized Interstates, the railroads' right-of-ways were taxed by the states through which they ran (NJ was notorious for this) were the cherry on top of the disaster sundae. However, the E-L merger has left its mark if you know where to look. The most obvious is the huge, brightly-lit sign over Hoboken Terminal facing Manhattan reading "Erie Lackawanna." NJ Transit's Hoboken Division still operates commuter services on the old E-L lines. The Montclair-Boonton Line in particular is an amalgamation of two branch lines, one each from the Erie and DL&W, that is a direct result of the merger and combining of redundant trackage. As mentioned in the video, Conrail abandoned the former E-L/DL&W main line, but regional road Delaware-Lackawanna now operates the segment between Scranton and the Delaware Water Gap. Norfolk Southern operates the former E-L trackage north of Scranton into New York's Lower Tier. The western part of the Lackawanna Cut-off that once connected the present-day Delaware-Lackawanna at East Stroudsburg, PA to the current terminus of NJT's Morristown Line at Hackettstown, NJ remains abandoned but, due to its well-engineered structures, is still easily visible (the massive concrete arch bridge over the Delaware River is hard to miss as you drive under it on I-80). New Jersey bought the right-of-way, and there are hopes to restore passenger service as far as Scranton in the future.

The reason why chessie probably didn't consult with unions is because Chessie is a Virginia based company and southern states didn't work the unions at the time

Imagine if there was an alternate universe where the Erie Lackawanna succeeded

why was this video not with your railroad history playlist. I almost missed this

After Hurricane Agnes in 1972. The Erie Lackawanna was heavily damaged by the storm. Chessie system was interested in absorbing the erie-lackawanna but the unions demanded six-man crew trains witches featherbedding in the extreme. The Railroad Union extreme demand killed any chance of survival the Erie Lackawanna had outside of Conrail. In trying to save a few jobs Union lost them all.

I'm from Marion, Ohio and I get to drive past the old ghosts of the Erie Lackawanna every day... Sad to see I wise I got to see them run back in the day...

it's been long rumored but never proven or debunked for that matter that the Maybrook bridge was burned on purpose by the Penn Central. As an interesting side note, the bridge still exists to this day and has been repaired as a pedestrian bridge.

Don't forget, a former DL&W roudhouse site became the home of Steamtown.

I’m noticing a theme with failed railroad mergers. There’s almost always a “do things the way we’ve always done them” group and a progressive group trying to work together to run the railroad. The “do things the way we’ve always done them” almost always comes from the railroad that was worse off, and they usually end up winning out in board meetings. And thus the merger eventually fails.

So would you ever do one on the Rock island since it has a very interesting story and how it's now back on a smaller scale

Next, cover the Virginian Railway, "The Richest little Railroad in the World". If you cannot make a joke out of that, I would be very disapointed. And it is an actual success story of two rail companies merging, though the dirty little secret is that both the Deepwater and Tidewater Railways were run by the same people.

The two lines, along with the PRR and Lehigh Valley, both ran through the town I grew up in. That would be the Elmira/Horseheads, NY area. Just a single track if the Erie mainline remains, and the Lackawanna right of way is almost completely gone.

My grandpa was an engineer for EL started with Lackawanna as a fireman on the steams......Took his last orders ride in the Bison Yard!!

I really enjoyed the video. Great presentation and knowledge. I'll check out more of yr videos, really dig rail history

Erie Lackawanna was abandoned by Conrail. Conrail was purchased by both CSX AND NORFOLK & SOUTHERN. I'm surprised they didn't retain parts of the ERIE from Conrail and operate on that line into Chicago.

Im happy I got to see my town, Spencerville, on the map. My grandparents were around to see the Erie Lackawanna and told me there was a train about every 30 minutes! Now there's only one every two weeks because RJ corman owns the line now and west end of tracks that continued west through Elgin was torn up but not the east end that's around the mill. Lima still has some of it is still standing but very overgrown, I have managed to find a train signal at MP 67, between Spencerville and Elgin, that Erie Lackawanna may of used but the signal part is missing.

@5:24 it’s pronounced Binghamton. Bing Ham Ton You’re welcome

wow the old erie livery is practicaly identical to the Victoria State Railway

Delaware-Lackawanna is a short line based out of Scranton founded in 1993. If you want to shorten the DL&W, just say "Lackawanna" instead.

You should cover the Lehigh and New England in the future, it has a similar story to EL and some of the things that brought about their downfall could be a lesson for the Class 1s today.

Love your energy and voice. Your railroad history lessons are fun to watch and have many great photos.

I enjoy all of your videos ❤️!! My favorite line is the Nickel Back

Have you thought of doing something on the white pass and yukon ? They survived until 1983 as a common carrier before shutting down for 5 years and lying dormant until rising like a phoenix and becoming one of the best trips in Alaska

you need to do a video on the story of Conrail comp

Very interesting!! Thanks for the effort you put into this. I remember the Erie Lackawanna during the Penn Central era. You’re personally reminds me of Cody Johnston from the KZfaq channel Some More News

you need to talk about the Alton railroad, Gulf Mobile and Ohio , and latter the Illinois Central Gulf road.

Very interesting and informative video.

To show you how the government work with Railroad when the bankrupt New Haven was forced upon the Penn Central and further killed it. In order to replace the passenger service for commuters the New Haven provided for the government made three different Transportation agencies that spent 10 times the amount of money that they could have spent to just buy the New Haven railroad Lock Stock & Barrel.

Could you do Chicago and Northwestern eventually? I don’t know much about what happened to them before they were sold to the employees but I’ve always liked them. Or the Rock Island, as I’m a conductor for Kyle Railroad in Kansas and we run on they’re old mainline.

"Waddya' do Giovann, on the Delaware Lakawann? Waddya do Giovann? Oh, I push, I push, I push." Know the tune?

My grandparents lived on the Lackawanna main line west of Painted Post, N.Y, and I rode the Phoebe Snow from Buffalo to Corning several times. If I remember correctly, the Erie tracks were less than one-half mile away, and they served the Ingersoll-Rand foundry. My grandparents house was flooded up to the second floor during the hurricane. It was really sad to see the Lackawanna go under. Really enjoyed the video.

I grew up in Clarks Summit, PA, the highest point of DL&W's main line north of Scranton. I was home for summer college break when Agnes hit, and it was mind-boggling. Rained for four days. Flood recovery in Wilkes-Barre was slowed down because the phone lines had been cut by boat props! During the recovery one local station reported the EL had suffered over 100 bridges and culverts had been damaged or destroyed, and that recovery would take years. Crying shame. Conrail abandoned and remove about 26 miles of trackage in NW New Jersey, the Lackawanna Cutoff. When it was built it was one of the largest rail construction projects east of the Mississippi. From first proposal to first train run took less than 5 years. New Jersey Transit proposed reopening this route to ease commuter problems in 2003. To date, 2023, they have reopened less than four miles, and one station.

I stayed at the Erie/Lackawanna hotel. Which is the former train station. Talk about vertigo i was in a top floor. The building has no floors just catwalk. But beautiful. I was there in 2020 working the traffic control for a lane clouser on I84 and I80 for the bridge inspection/repairs there then. They set up k-rails/jersey barriers but went to slipknot concert with a Peterbiilt TMA.

You could possibly do a video about O gauge manufacturers suing each other and make it interesting to listen to.

It would have been nice if Chessie was able to acquire EL. As a result of this, the D&H was granted trackage rights over parts of CR, thus providing a (rather meager) form of competition. But I would have loved to see Chessie have an expanded presence in the Northeast. R.I.P. to the Erie Lack of Money.

The area where Erie's terminal used to sit is now a mall and offices/condos.

Yo HITD! Have you ever heard about a Japanese Man during WW2 who is behind the plan to help the Jews escape Nazi Germany to the Japanese ocupided lands. This saved him from Execution during the Tokyo trials, he ended up as the first Ambassador for Israel in 1952.

Ah, the poor old Erie-Lackatraffic. Sad story, that one...

The Chicago & Indiana RR was not meant to try and have a go at making it… it was formed to finish serving the few remaining customers after the Erie Western went under…. It gave time for them to change over to trucking shippers or alt rail. There were a couple smaller short lines that formed after that for local work, basically to transfer cars to the nearest class 1 RR

Haha that PennCentral moment to come and f things up 😂😂 that was great . HEY GUYS how’s it going !!!!

The yellow painted nose on the last photo's is a good color, a nice paint job!

Actually, much of the Penn Central's mishandling of freight was due to the negligence and apathy of its surrounding railroads in the area. One of the largest obstacles it had to overcome in the months following the merger was the radically different ways the New York Central and Pennsylvania moved freight. NYC's freight yards were mostly modernized by that time, whereas those of the Pennsylvania were still operated the same way they'd been since the turn of the 20th century. In addition, the two railroads used entirely different methods for classifying freight traffic. So the PC's management asked all the other surrounding railroads which it did business with to continue to separate freight traffic as they did before the merger until the PC could reorganize and consolidate its methods of handling freight. The PC had also prepared detailed instructions for the other railroads how to do this while still taking into account that technically, there was now only one railroad. But the other railroads totally ignored the PC's request and sent incoming freight traffic to whichever yard they felt to be most convenient. As for what happened to the freight after it was handed off to the PC, well, they didn't consider it to be their problem. The end result was a predictable series of multiple clusterfucks all leading to diminished freight traffic.

EL Indiana lines are really cool to research and find artifacts. Alot to see in indiana

And this is why railfans most popular pastime is dreaming up an alternate reality in which the Penn Central was successful. Don't lie, you've done it too.

great video, a book titled " Death of an American Railroad, 1938-1992" by H. Roger Grant is a great read about the history of the Erie and the Erie Lackawanna railroad

I.loved the erie lawawanna, the big e,Milwaukee road,rock island, my favorite roads,

Long live the Delaware and Lackawanna Railroad.

Well researched and presented. It's a sad story for the Erie, which was r*ped by Wall Street crooks more than once.

new Haven as going down hill and the erie lackwana knew it bad choices were made and the wrong lines were closed down like the bootom branch

Now, that is proper Halloween story:(:(:(

It’s only my opinion based on the stuff I’ve read, but I wonder, when PennCentral went bankrupt I often wonder if the ICC would’ve just broke the PennCentral up back to pre merger status including NH would some of these other roads been able to survive, especially since commuter service was to be taken over by local state governments?? Idk just a thought??……

those beautiful emds sd 45 were the best of the el

I don't understand what ever happens to the insurance money they put on the infrastructure. Oh the bridge is insured, it burns, and magically they never have the money to rebuild it

Good job on this subject. It still ticks me off about the way N&W dropped the EL after Hurricane Agnes caused so much damage. Think about this, if the N&W would have kept the EL they would have had a direct connection to the New York market. The EL was running TOFC and container traffic from Chicago to New York on a 24 hour schedule. Something the PC couldn’t do. BTW that issue of Chessie and the unions also applies to the Reading Railroad. Don’t know about the pay scale but it had to do with Reading employees losing their seniority, basically they would have to start like a new employee. The Reading folks said NO, and the Reading ended up in Conrail.

Top 10 saddest anime death

You shood do one on the DRGW

Interesting

A lot of EL track goes thru areas with no traffic potential, i.e. the southern tier of NY, one vast rust belt, a region that features NY level taxes and appalachian economics to pay them. Ohio and Indiana don't have the taxes but they don't have much to offer either.

Passenger travel by rail was really never a thing in the USA, as the railroads didn’t seem to even want passenger traffic since about 1960. Back in the day, I saw many EL trains running through south Buffalo. Aside from BNSF & UP, most railroads are overbuilt/redundant, run down or abandoned. A waste from yesteryear.

20:19-20:40 needs to become a short

and what we learned today? Penn Central will always be a bummer

In your opinion which is better steam or Diesel

Intermodal is pronounced with a long "o", because, you know, different modes of travel.

Of course the west end was literally abandoned overnight by Conrail after April 1st 1976.

the E3l would have work out if the Lackwana Management ran the Rail road

To be fair Erie Lackawanna did better then the other two merger especially Penn central cause it did post profits for a good long time before hurricane agnes came

Ah! I was preparing a video on the history of the EL! It's a long an arduous process but hopefully one day I can get it done! Also I don't get how you could have "the best engineered line" across a state that was already pretty flat to begin with A few more interesting things: - I believe it's pronounced Shoe-MAKER not Schumacher - White did actually manage to get rid of a lot of short branch lines in New Jersey in 1966 - Refusal of the unions to cooperate with each other made it so that some people said the EL didn't exist as one until June 1961 - The EL discontinued its last intercity train (the Lake Cities) in early 1970- cities like Binghamton, Scranton, Elmira have lacked passenger service ever since - The Santa Fe reportedly expressed interest in acquiring the EL but the latter declined because they were too far along the path to Conrail - One scheme was to have all the non-Penn Central Conrail railroads become part of what was to be called MARC-EL (Mid Atlantic Rail Corporation-Erie Lackawanna)- not to be confused with the commuter agency in Maryland known as MARC- that would act as the main competitor to the rehabilitated PC lines but this didn't take off because a second government system wasn't wanted

eire lackawanna have such a bad luck

nice Lie the NCY Water level had almost no grades and was a better route and faster route . the El needed 3 sd 45's to get a train fron NYC to Marion on then 2 Sd 45's to get to chicago plus helpers from Stroudsburg Pa to Clarks summit Pa, the NYC water level route could get the same train from NYC Ny to Chicago Il with 2 Gp 40's need more crew change points then the NYC did

Long Live Lackawanna

Why are all your train finders under water?

Do the Missouri Kansas Texas railroad also known as the Katy

@14:58 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

The loss of MAIL AND EXPRESS killed the passenger service. GM got that done. Railroads were private companies taxed and those taxes were used to build super highways and airports. In fact there was a extra tax even on tickets. Erie was high and wide could run the future stackers. Eire had 150 curves along the Delaware River they are still there! Port Jervis to Binghamton. ICC had nothing to do with the failure. It was the government super highways that did it. Not the ICC. As mail and express went to trucks some to air the trains came off. Under 1000 miles trains were cheaper and just as fast . But the highway people got into government and lobbied against trains. Most traffic goes between and to small towns in between not between the very profitable end points. Even in the good old days. Long as the cash came in it didn't matter about management issues. Erie was the company that was the survivor for sure. Airlines get loans from the government. In a year or two they are forgiven! That's how some of their bailouts worked. No such bailout for railroads Penn Central went broke and didn't have to pay their interchange bills. That killed all NE railroads. The bridge could have been fixed but the banks did not want it fixed. There was a Wall Street plan called Conrail. Norfolk and Western had a interest in EL to the end! The very end in 1992. No competition is what the customers did not want! Government didn't care. Wall Street owned it and their influence counted. . The commuter losses were the issue. Conrail only bought and operated the lines they wanted. The EL conditioned on with the rest. Selling them and leasing them out. Erie Western was managed by Greg Burroughs .I only met him once. He was a liquidator who sucked the money out of the company then scrapped it. He only leased the west end. Which was built for the bridge traffic like the NKP that is still there not far away. With Fort Wayne on it. El continued on paying dividends as they sold off property and assets. A line that was a super railroad, could have been used for the coming stackers. But the issue was there was too much money to be made on the assets being sold. No competition would drive up rates inflation too. by the way. There are bailouts all the time for airlines, buses, water carriers oh yes they get lots of government help! Ports Ice breakers and bailouts! None for Erie Lackawanna. Conrail was a BANK BAILOUT so they could sell bonds worth 25 cents to the government for 1000 thousand dollars. In the future there would be trillions in bailouts for airlines, auto industry. Socialism always bails out Capitalism . Loss of EL impacted employees, towns and customers. .

Good old Erie Lackofmoney

British rail but the rolling Stones be like All of those kettles there I want them to turn black All steam and diesels are all never coming back

It's Binghamton, not Birmingham!

it was not gibson ny it was Painted post Ny

😏I can now only imagine Erie merging with the Pennsy and Lackawanna merging with NYC I think everyone would’ve been happy 🙄😒but no that’s not what happened but what matters is it got all long solved now

Slowest way to Chicago. Yes I can understand why they went bankrupt.

that guy has it wrong most of the Erie Lackwana was momthball west of youngstown Ohio

is he a weeb? 0:36

the NCY water level route was a lot better, it had no helpers, the Erie had helpers. it was joked the erie found every hill in ohio

Ah a fellow weeb 😎

I respect CN n CP but it is bizarre that they survived n excelled in an era when dozens of American RRs fell by the wayside! Not a great 50yrs for American capitalism! Wowowow! So sad…greed, incompetence, ICE pathetic over-sight/hurdles, n likely dozens of other problem variables.

I've really enjoyed your videos. They have been very good quality documentaries, but having to insert your face really detracts from the quality and I find it annoying. There's just no need for it.