Nostalgia & History > Surprise track work on the EL

Dec 1975
I was following this EL train, when I caught up with it between Wadsworth and Barberton,Oh (near Akron) it was eastbound on the westward main.
Major track work on the other main with welded rail being laid.
Only three or four months before Conrail I was surprised with major work and money spent at this late date.
Although at this time wasn't the Chessie still considering taking over the EL ?
Gary

 

---

---

---

Nice catch and glad you thought enough to take a few photos.

I think there was funding provided by the 3R Act that funded these projects but right off I can't locate the details. I know there was a 136RE CWR program for a few miles just east of Corry, PA in 1975. 

Talks formally broke down with Chessie on February 27, 1976, but it is reported that DOT Secretary Coleman called a last minute meeting after March 22nd (the date the talks with Southern ended for the DelMarva lines) in a last ditch attempt to bring the parties together related to the EL. This meeting was held in a hotel in Baltimore and apparently nothing was accomplished.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/03/26 10:48 by train1275.

Perhaps you used a telephoto or zoom, but those tracks certainly look "NASTY"!
Bob

Nice documentation. Indeed, the EL was "business as usual" right up to C-Day. There was a big caboose painting project at Meadville too, with many getting the newer reverse image just a couple months prior to CR. Starting in mid '76, the same cars would get covered in blue at the same shop....crazy.  

Roger Durfee
Cuyahoga Falls, OH

Reportedly, the unions couldn't come to terms?

Victor Baird

train1275 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Nice catch and glad you thought enough to take a
> few photos.
>
> I think there was funding provided by the 3R Act
> that funded these projects but right off I can't
> locate the details. I know there was a 136RE CWR
> program for a few miles just east of Corry, PA in
> 1975. 
>
> Talks formally broke down with Chessie on February
> 27, 1976, but it is reported that DOT Secretary
> Coleman called a last minute meeting after March
> 22nd (the date the talks with Southern ended for
> the DelMarva lines) in a last ditch attempt to
> bring the parties together related to the EL. This
> meeting was held in a hotel in Baltimore and
> apparently nothing was accomplished.

Chessie wanted all EL union workers to roll back to first day seniority for vacation pay purposes. The older heads who were getting 5 weeks would go back to 1 or 2 week yearly vacation pay. Not a very well accepted idea.

rr caboose

This was pretty much business as usual as the whole Conrail "thing" was so "tentative". No one knew what was going to actually take place. Until it did.
Gonut

How different the Northeast RR world would have been if Chessie had acquired the EL from central Ohio eastward to the Southern Tier and New Jersey, as well as about 350 miles of the Reading.in the Harrisburg-Allentown-Philadelphia area. Conrail would have had meaningful competition to/from the northeast US and without the Reading Allentown-Harrisburg segment, it wouldn't have had the option to vacate Amtrak's NE Corridor. New Jersey / New England-bound Chessie Trailer Jets perhaps would have run on the Tier (with double stacked containers) and Tier traffic would have been more than a handful of daily trains using the EL Delaware Division. NYS&W would have remained a NJ shortline. Would the D&H and B&M have remained independent and would the Guilford fiasco been limited to the MEC? 

NY Times: Chessie Studies Bid for Erie‐Lackawanna - May 15, 1975



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/04/26 04:08 by JPB.

But what would have happened when Conrail was split btw CSX and NS?

Victor Baird


JPB Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> How different the Northeast RR world would have
> been if Chessie had acquired the EL from central
> Ohio eastward to the Southern Tier and New Jersey,
> as well as about 350 miles of the Reading.in the
> Harrisburg-Allentown-Philadelphia area. Conrail
> would have had meaningful competition to/from the
> northeast US and without the Reading
> Allentown-Harrisburg segment, it wouldn't have had
> the option to vacate Amtrak's NE Corridor. New
> Jersey / New England-bound Chessie Trailer Jets
> perhaps would have run on the Tier (with double
> stacked containers) and Tier traffic would have
> been more than a handful of daily trains using the
> EL Delaware Division. NYS&W would have remained a
> NJ shortline. Would the D&H and B&M have remained
> independent and would the Guilford fiasco been
> limited to the MEC? 
>
> NY Times: Chessie Studies Bid for
> Erie‐Lackawanna - May 15, 1975

wabash2800 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> But what would have happened when Conrail was
> split btw CSX and NS?
>
> Victor Baird
>

That's a good question! At the time of Conrail formation, Norfolk Southern didn't yet exist and N&W didn't seem to be interested in having direct access to New Jersey, NY, and New England. Of course, N&W's east - west traffic may have suffered due to loss of friendly connections east of Buffalo (eg, LV and EL) and east of Pittsburgh as well as having to compete with 2 class 1 RRs, Conrail and Chessie. Merging with Southern in 1982 certainly helped solidify N&W's business in Appalachia and the SE US but at some point, the new NS likely would seek direct access to the NE US to compete more effectively with CSX. Don't know if the US would have put this EL-less/RDG-less version of Conrail up for sale in 1983 but if so, NS would have been interested in buying this slimmer version of Conrail?

The idea of Southern Railway taking the Delmarva lines is also interesting. Would they have rights on the RF&P/B&O to get there from DC?  Or on the NEC?  Or keep the ferry service, and get rights to Norfolk?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/05/26 06:15 by Lackawanna484.

I can personally speak to the lingering "concern" that Conrail had by almost picking up EL at the last minute, particulary after NYSW picked their pocket with cobbled-together B&P trackage rights via Buffalo for intermodal all the way into Little Ferry.    They were ourmanuvered strategically and they knew it.  And, CSX did not forget about the E-L.   Conrail desperately wanted to abandon all of it to block that move to connect it west, but NY stood in the way, so they picked on the portion of track between Corry, PA and Meadville, PA to cut it off from any possible CSX connection to the west.  That turned into a real battle in front of the STB, with contributions from David Levan, HR Transportation committee majority leader Bud Shuster, and an entire cast of characters that 'knew' CSX was funding the resistance.    In the end, the line was actually preserved, but the attempt to use E-L to gain access to the NY intermodal market by connecting Youngstown to Binghamton was negated by splitting Conrail up.

WNYP got the main line fron NS after the breakup and the NS coal moves used for trackage rights,as long as the coal power plant moves held up.   Today it's still there, but out of service, the last regular coal trains served Bow, NH, that converted to gas.   But for a good decade it stayed a very useful link to Binghamton for coal traffic and referred to by one NS executive as "a 40 mph conveyor belt".

I was out to Wadsworth and Rittman about 1993, looking at what to do with what is now referred to as the Akron Cluster.   Having ridden on the Phoebe Snow as an 8-year old, and watching EL blast through my area at 65mph with the UPS trains, it was totally distressing to literally find 'end of track' of the main line at Rittman, torn up west of there.   

CSX pulled some of the same kind of inexplicable ssues, they did all welded rail down on West Virginia on the Bergoo line and then put it up for abandonment in under five years, and also did all welded rail on the Cleveland-Akron line that is now CVSR shortly before selling it off.   There was no apparent connection between strategic planning and capital improvement policy there, either.

And don't forget that the Santa Fe looked into acquiring the Erie Lackawanna. Conrail twisted its arm not to do so. It would have been interesting to see the Santa Fe put money into the old EL mainline and make the EL part of a super railroad to the east coast.

That would have been a transcontinental railroad that beat the current proposed NS-UP transcontinental.  It has been said that Conrail muscled shortlines into submission.. I am aware of one that had its thru grain rates canceled by Conrail. Did Conrail threaten interchange and tariff problems. What was the muscle?

Victor Baird



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/06/26 15:43 by wabash2800.