Re: (erielack) Happy Erie Lackawanna Day!

["Paul Brezicki" <doctorpb_@_bellsouth.net>]

I may still have one or two of those torpedos from that day somewhere down in
the basement. They're probably dangerous being 30 years old by now.

Happy Birthday E-L!

Henry

Thanks for that hilarious story. It's probably a good idea to dispose of those explosives in your basement. July 4 2007 wouldn't be too soon; in the meantime, don't light a match down there.

Someone posted regrets about the Erie "takeover" of DL&W. A lot of "mergers " are like that, look at the Penn and Central 8 yeasr later; this one also illustrates that it's usually not the brightest who end up at the controls. Rest assured that by 1960, both the Erie and Lackawanna were doomed, with or without merger.

My own introduction to EL was in August 1971 when I was fifteen. We set off from Toronto on a family trip across NY and New England, passing Black Rock on the way to the Southern Tier. My father, a sometimes reluctant and often unwitting facilitator of my RR obsession, made the strategic mistake of assigning navigation to me, so naturally our route tended to follow RR lines. More than once, he asked why it seemed to be taking so long to get from point A to point B. On this trip I was determined to check out the EL, so the first point of interest was the Canisteo Valley. I noted that Hornell Yd was bustling as we passed over the west throat on hwy 36, then we stopped in Canisteo for a quick picnic lunch. I wandered off to the tracks and I was thrilled to be standing next to a NY-Chicago mainline. It wasn't long before a westbound (probably NY-97) came through at the 50mph track speed, 5 units and 125 cars of TOFC, hy-cubes etc. I marvelled at the long piggyback flats (we just had the single-trailer variety up in Canada) and how the trailers would bounce up and down on the jointed rail (it's called "topsway"). As the BWC (another novelty) disappeared around the curve towards ZY, I turned to walk back down the road to the car. I didn't get far before a loud popping sound brought me back to trackside and an eastbound (most likely ATC-2, later BS-2) with an F-B unit bracketed by GE's (third novelty) went by. We would see this train again at Corning. If I'd known better we would have continued east on hwy 119 down the Canisteo Valley instead of 36, and we would have passed another train or two including CX-99.

That was one of the most memorable days of my life, and helps motivate my re-creation of the Southern Tier in HO scale.

Paul B

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