EL: What If The Hurricane Never Happened

This whole topic is a couple of truck loads of beer and no clocks allowed discussion. In reality, though, commuter operations were such a small portion of the EL's, or any eastern road's, problems at that time. So, no NJDOT taking over would not have been the panecea.

As I noted over at Fallen Flags Discussion, there was 1980 "talk" of a proposal that found its way into the Chicago Tribune whereby Japanese maritime interests considered a purchase of MILW Road Lines West from the Bankrupt's Estate. This would have enabled the maritime companies to have railroad transportation available to meet their requirements and of course provide a competitive E-W routing the lack of which I believe has been a factor in making the Port of Seattle a backwater when compared with Ports of LA/LB (Yes, UP makes E-W rates out of the Pacific NW but their routing is "circuitous' to say the least).

Now what I think could have been EL's "shot in the arm' would have been if European maritime interests could have made a bid to the Estate to acquire the ERIE, save the DL&W commuter lines where the public ownership initiative was clearly on the table. Yes 997 miles Hob-ERIE-Chi is circuitous when compared with 960 (NYC) or 907 (PRR), but again it would be a railroad under the control of the maritime interests. With 96 hours (reasonable and doable) "docking to sailing" time Seattle to New York, the forgotten "land-bridge' concept of trans-loading containers for rail shipment would be a meaningful part of railroad traffic today. Reliable service would mean that Longshoremen would be 'ready to rumble' when a train arrived. Maritime companies would no longer be compelled to route Asian-European trade 'round the Cape' (OK; check to see who has their pop guns out at who then chance a Suez Canal routing) . The Panama Canal would primarily play host to cruise ships and there would be no talk of developing Mexican ports - all of which is costly and rife with political uncertainty.

But alas, during 1980, there was much anti-Japanese sentiment, and the proposal went no further than the newspaper article.

But as this topic discussion notes, the overseers at USRA and elsewhere simply had mindset "the ERIE's gotta go'. Review my other thoughts at the linked topic and you will note the same sentiment was prevalent at the MILW.

The EL might look like this today...



Microsoft Train Simulator D9-40cw repainted by yours truly

Spin wrote:The EL might look like this today...



Microsoft Train Simulator D9-40cw repainted by yours truly

very cool!!! Should do one in a sd80mac!

Not bad I like it!

Too bad NS cannot repaint the former EL SD45s back to EL paint, that would be cool. But it's only a pipe dream!

Lets see some more work.

Right now I'm working on three different era's, Erie steam, EL 1960's-70's, and that was a splash of the modern era. And it's slow going.

What I need is a head count of everyone who has Train Sim (or is going to buy it ($8-10), and what era you want to run the most.

I have a forum set up at http://or4c.com/board/viewforum.php?f=77, if interested, log in and vote in the poll.Then I can concentrate on what you guys will run most.

Hey all,

I've painted up a few drawings in EL paint and posted them on my website. The GE unit looks quite similar to Spin's photo below - I guess we both assume that EL would have stuck with its tried and true paint scheme through to modern times.

http://www.trainweb.org/southpenn/paintings.htm

Now if I could figure out how to do 3D models like that...

Enjoy!

Painting (reskinning) in MSTS is not that hard at all.

You use a program called TGATool2 which takes a set of the "skins" on the object, and converts them so your paint program can edit it. Then it converts it back to a "skin".

That's about all there is, do the conversion, repaint the skin just like you do your locos, then click a couple things on TGATool and it's on the model.

I've been wondering could the EL merged with someone before Agnes, I have an scenarios that I want everyone to think about

Idea 1. EL+MKT+Rock Island+D&H+B&M, does anyone think that could of worked?
Idea 2. EL+ATSF+Milwaukee Road. This, at least to my opinion, would be a great merger as the Santa Fe and EL interchanged a lot.
Idea 3. EL+BN. I don't know how well this would work, I'd guess pretty well considering that BN was ran very similar to ATSF, or at least that is what I've read.
Idea 4. EL+N&W+D&H+B&M. This may have been a good merger considering N&W owned the EL and could of absorbed it along with the B&M and D&H
Idea 5. EL+CP. CP did buy a lot of EL track in New York, however, according to a friend of mine, they wanted to buy the entire EL route, but the trustees and Conrail said no. Conrail probably knew that if the EL was bought by the CP, Conrail would be in deep trouble as the CP would have rebuilt the line for 70mph freight.

The only reason CP owns any EL in New York is because they purchased the D&H, which had replaced it's own line to Scranton with the former DL&W out of Binghamton in 1982. As I noted in the other thread, the D&H had an option to purchase the former Erie from Binghamton to Buffalo, and the CP did express an interest in excercising this option in the 1990s but ultimately did not do so.

The only place that the original CP had any contact with the EL would be through Niagara Falls, although CP has always had a stake in Soo Line and they could have connected at Chicago also.

The ICC would have never allowed a transcontinental merger, to this day we don't have one transcontinental system, rather two systems east, two systems west, and the CN (IC) down the middle. That rules out Santa Fe, BN, and the pre-1982 Milwaukee Road.

Now the EL-N&W-D&H-B&M merger has kind of taken place, with NS now owning the majority of what remains of the EL, investing a lot of money in the west end of the B&M, and having haulage rights on the former D&H both between Albany and Binghamton, and Binghamton and Sunbury. Its ironic that NS is reaching the Scranton area via the former DL&W 20 years after Conrail tried to abandon it.

N&W did own through a holding company both EL and the D&H in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But merging with the EL then would have saddled them with duplicate routes from Buffalo westward to try to abandon. In the wake of the PC failure - a failure in part because PC couldn't get permission to abandon a lot of it's duplicate midwestern trackage, PRR and NYC were such fierce competitors they had duplicate routes to just about every pair of major cities you could name - they chose instead to send EL to Conrail.

There are a couple of other threads about the hows and whys of what was going on then, you might want to read through rather than me try to sum them up again here.

Here is my proposal,
How about the EL, D&H, and B&M merge together, plus the NYC main from Marion to St. Louis, the Wabash from Chicago to Toledo, and one of the lines between Detroit and Toledo. Could that of worked?

EL + D&H + B&M - workable, as noted it more or less exists now with NS's haulage rights on the D&H to reach the B&M and their investment in the "Patriot Corridor" of the B&M mainline.

Add the DT&I for a Toledo route makes more sense than a duplicate route back from Chicago. It's more doable, too, given that CN eventually spun it off to a shortline. I think NS is still using portions of that Wabash route.

The NYC line mentioned continues to be a major mainline route for CSX. It may have been possible to create an alternate St. Louis line using pieces of other road's abandoned lines (the NKP "Cloverleaf" for instance) but it's just as easy to interchange with the N&W/NS or the IC/CN for that traffic.

As an alternate thought, having the Wabash itself divested to the EL instead of the N&W in 1964 would create a workable situation, or the EL getting the Pennsy's shares of it and maintaining it as an idependent road. The Wabash has some benefit over the NKP in that it reaches Kansas City and Detroit, and their route to St. Louis was better than the NKP route.

lvrr325 wrote:EL + D&H + B&M - workable, as noted it more or less exists now with NS's haulage rights on the D&H to reach the B&M and their investment in the "Patriot Corridor" of the B&M mainline.

Add the DT&I for a Toledo route makes more sense than a duplicate route back from Chicago. It's more doable, too, given that CN eventually spun it off to a shortline. I think NS is still using portions of that Wabash route.

The NYC line mentioned continues to be a major mainline route for CSX. It may have been possible to create an alternate St. Louis line using pieces of other road's abandoned lines (the NKP "Cloverleaf" for instance) but it's just as easy to interchange with the N&W/NS or the IC/CN for that traffic.

As an alternate thought, having the Wabash itself divested to the EL instead of the N&W in 1964 would create a workable situation, or the EL getting the Pennsy's shares of it and maintaining it as an idependent road. The Wabash has some benefit over the NKP in that it reaches Kansas City and Detroit, and their route to St. Louis was better than the NKP route.

Actually a shortline runs from South Milford Indiana to Montpelier Ohio, the rest of the line between Chicago and Toledo has been removed. Of course that would probably wouldn't be a great idea as you stated about LVRR325, Of course the DT&I idea, or at least I think is a great Idea, and I have always pondered what would have occured had a EL/Wabash merger happened. Too bad Conrail had to pull the plug on so much trackage. I believe the main reason Conrail pulled the plug on the EL is because they knew if someone had bought the line, Conrail would be flat out screwed.

ELSFRR wrote:Too bad Conrail had to pull the plug on so much trackage. I believe the main reason Conrail pulled the plug on the EL is because they knew if someone had bought the line, Conrail would be flat out screwed.

Once more I feel compelled to dispel this myth. Conrail did not "pull the plug" on the EL. This was done prior to the start of operations on 4/1/76 by the USRA in their planning process for Conrail.

Once more I feel compelled to dispel this myth. Conrail did not "pull the plug" on the EL. This was done prior to the start of operations on 4/1/76 by the USRA in their planning process for Conrail.[/quote]

I didn't know that, I always figured Conrail closed it. Still, I wondered, did the West end of the EL, was it ever ran by Conrail?