Erie Memories
Erie Memories by Edward J. Crist cover
Image of the "Erie Memories" book by Edward J. Crist cover.
Name/Title
Erie MemoriesEntry/Object ID
chs-000004Description
Erie Memories by Edward J Crist Hard Cover Erie Memories by Edward J Crist Hard Cover Copyright 1993 161 pages CONTENTS Acknowledgements4 Historical Time Line5 Notes on the Maps and Profiles6 The Erie in Chicago8 The Marion Division12 The Kent Division19 The Mahoning Division25 The Meadville Division36 The Allegany Division44 The Buffalo & Southwestern Division 51 The Bradford Division 54 The Buffalo Division and The Rochester Division58 The Susquehanna Division70 The Tioga Division78 The Jefferson Division and The Wyoming Division80 The Delaware Division90 The New York Division97 The Graham Line122 New York & Greenwood Lake130 New York, Susquehanna & Western and Wilkes-Barre & Eastern137 New Jersey & New York144 Northern Railroad of New Jersey148 The Erie in Jersey City151 Index to Erie Motive Power Details 160 PREFACE Bringing Erie Memories to completion has been a long task, but perhaps one of the most interesting book projects that we have worked on. In late 1986, the late John Krause and the late Rod Dirkes produced Route of the Erie Limited, a look at Erie's passenger trains that has become a long-standing favorite. It quickly became apparent that the wide diversity of the Erie's motive power, operations, and the people who built and ran it had barely been touched. So the logical course was another book which would expand to cover more of Erie's power and the freight operations. Rod Dirkes had many more Erie photos, Bob Collins quickly joined us and, as the acknowledgments show, a wealth of individuals all contributed to the work. Work was proceeding slowly as we completed other books through the late 1980s. John Krause began serious work on the book in late 1988, but even as he was digging into the project, Johnny died suddenly on April 30, 1989. As we gathered up his effects, we found the photos and negatives he had chosen for this book spread out on a large table in the center of the living room. After a short time, work on the book resumed but it was increasingly disturbing to find how little collected information was available in print. Information was scattered about here and there in a multitude of books and numerous articles, many of which were difficult to obtain. We wanted to set as much of the basics down in print as possible, and this very nearly proved to be our undoing. Perhaps our enthusiasm got the better of our judgement, and the result has been that Erie Memories has taken an extraordinary amount of time to complete. But we hope the results meet with your approval. We ended up with perhaps two to three times as much material as would possibly fit in these pages. So we have attempted to lay down the basics. The time line will detail the history of the Erie in condensed form from its earliest beginnings in 1829 up to the 1960 Erie-Lackawanna merger. An index of motive power details on page 160 directs the reader to those pages where more detailed information about each class will be found. The book focuses on roughly 25 years of Erie history. It has been more than 30 years since the Erie-Lackawanna merger and a little more than 15 years since E-L disappeared into the folds of Conrail. A whole generation has grown up knowing mostly Conrail while another generation knew only the Erie-Lackawanna. It is to readers of both those particular generations that we hope this volume speaks. The Erie, so often a road of stark contrasts, a road that saw the best and worst of times, deserves to be remembered fondly, and we hope we have been able to accomplish something toward that end.Category
Erie, Erie-Lackawana, Conrail