Erie Railroad HO Scale Models

The Erie Railroad traced its origins to the New York and Erie Rail Road, chartered by New York State in April 1832 with the ambitious goal of connecting the Hudson River to the shores of Lake Erie at Dunkirk, New York. Construction proved slow and expensive, and the line was not completed in its entirety until May 1851, when a celebrated inaugural excursion carried President Millard Fillmore and members of his cabinet across the full length of the route. The original line was built to a broad gauge of six feet, then considered a technically superior approach, but the incompatibility of this gauge with the broader standard-gauge network eventually forced a costly conversion program in the 1870s and 1880s. That financial burden, combined with ruinous rate wars and the destabilizing influence of speculators such as Jay Gould during the notorious Erie War of the 1860s, drove the company through successive bankruptcy reorganizations. It operated as the Erie Railway from 1861 to 1878, then as the New York, Lake Erie and Western Railroad from 1878 to 1895, before emerging in its final form as the Erie Railroad in 1895 under the reorganization entity that carried the reporting mark ERIE. The Erie Railroad in its mature form operated a main line stretching from Pavonia Terminal in Jersey City, New Jersey, westward through the Southern Tier of New York State, passing through such cities as Port Jervis, Binghamton, Elmira, and Hornell before continuing on to Chicago, a route made possible by the earlier absorption of the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad following an 1865 merger. Hornell became a particularly significant point on the system, serving as the location where the main line diverged, with one branch heading northwest toward Buffalo and the other continuing west toward Chicago. The railroad's large repair shops at Hornell became among the most productive on the entire system, handling hundreds of locomotive overhauls annually by the late 1920s. The Erie's route through the Southern Tier exerted a substantial influence on the economic development of the region, and communities along the line depended heavily on railroad employment and the commerce the railroad brought. The Erie Railroad that emerged in 1895 from the reorganization of the New York, Lake Erie and Western was headquartered in Cleveland and benefited from the financial backing of J. P. Morgan, which helped stabilize a property that had long been financially troubled. The railroad absorbed several subsidiaries over the following decades, including the Cleveland and Mahoning Valley Railroad, and briefly controlled the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railroad, which provided access to anthracite coal territory in northeastern Pennsylvania. Despite periodic improvements in its physical plant and operations, the Erie remained one of the weaker trunk line carriers in the northeastern United States, lacking the density of traffic and the favorable grades enjoyed by some of its competitors. After decades of rivalry, the Erie Railroad and the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad concluded that consolidation offered their best path forward, and on October 17, 1960, the two companies merged to form the Erie Lackawanna Railway, ending the Erie's independent existence after more than a century of operation under various names. The legacy of the Erie Railroad persisted well beyond the 1960 merger. The Erie Lackawanna itself was absorbed into Conrail in 1976, and portions of the former Erie main line eventually passed to Norfolk Southern Railway, which today operates the Southern Tier corridor as an important east-west freight artery. Other segments of the old Erie became part of New Jersey Transit commuter rail operations beginning in the early 1980s, continuing to carry passengers on routes that the Erie had served for generations. The Starrucca Viaduct in Lanesboro, Pennsylvania, built by the New York and Erie in 1848, stands as a particularly enduring physical monument to the railroad, remaining in active use into the twenty-first century and recognized as the oldest stone railroad bridge in Pennsylvania still carrying rail traffic.