Erie - Lackawanna (#1017)

The Erie Lackawanna Railroad was formed from the 1960 merger of the Erie Railroad and the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad. The official company name initially included a hyphen between Erie and Lackawanna, but this was dropped in 1963. The official motto of the line was "The Friendly Service Route". The EL struggled for most of the 16 years it existed. The two railroads that created it were steadily losing passengers, freight traffic and money, and were heavily burdened by years of accumulated debt. These two historic lines, the Erie and the D.L.& W., started to consolidate facilities on the Hudson River waterfront and across southern New York State in 1956, four years before formal corporate merger. The Lackawanna route was severely affected by the decline of anthracite and cement traffic from Pennsylvania by the 1940s. The Erie was burdened by the continuing loss of high-tariff fruit and vegetable traffic from the western states into the New York City region as highways improved in the 1950s. Both lines were also impacted by the opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway in 1959, which allowed ocean-going cargo ships to travel between European, African and South American ports and cities on the Great Lakes, such as Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, & Chicago. The EL was purchased by the Norfolk & Western Railroad through its holding company DERECO in 1968, as a condition of the proposed but never consummated merger between N&W and the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway system. At that time, the company changed its name to Erie Lackawanna Railway, whereby all common stock for the new company was held by N&W / DERECO. In the east, much of the EL remains, as commuter railroad routes in New Jersey, and as freight lines in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. West of Youngstown, Ohio, however, the route is gone, having been abandoned and removed before 1980 in favor of parallel former Penn Central lines.

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