Please do allow some more EL pre-Conrail Blues and post memories: Before it was riding in the family car on the way to see relatives on the alert for any trains, when we were riding along PA Rt6 just east of Erie/Warren County line, where the EL's double-track main was right next to the roadway on the south side. To the east, suddenly seemingly, a headlight, then two GP35's pulling a wb trailertrain just blew by us with a red bay window caboose on the end, going by in a blur! Farther east, past the underpass east of Columbus Milling (the "CM" for the junction near there), on another trip was a stopped eb mixed freight stopped at CM Junction with mixed EL 1st and 2nd generation power. Imagine, seeing F's and Rs-3's in a lash-up with SD's and U-boats! Another time at Union City, PA, driving to the tracks near Cherry Hill Manufacturing (funiture manufacturer) during one of the nightmare winters of the early 1970's, after pleading with my Dad to "check out the Erie Lackawanna", to see a lone GP7 idling, complete with a green antifreeze icicle hanging from it, coupled to some boxcars with a huge ex-DL&W cupola caboose on the tail, parked on the siding, outlawed probably from its Meadville to Jamestown, NY, way-freight duty. Or seeing a wb, west of where the mains split in Union City to Cambridge Springs, PA (through Mill Village and Miller's Station) with U33C's on the front. These were some images of the EL that are emblazoned on my memory from the "before Conrail" time.
Post-April 1st, 1976, things just went down in a slow, steady fashion. My first tip that things were going to get real bad was on a visit to the EL tower operator (my memory is bit hazy as I remember a B&LE tower plus another closed one where an old PRR line crossed) at Shenango, PA, in 1977, when he told me that the railroad had already been "segmented" somewhere in western Ohio and Indiana. I remember being told that there were only four trains each direction going out of Meadville at the time.
Road power was mostly PC black with Precision National then CN lease power mixed in. Meadville Yard had a GP7 or SW's in EL colors to be seen in switching duties there at the time. One time, there was an old EL ALCO C-424 parked with other power at the engine house next to the monsterous concrete coaling tower that stil bore the "ERIE" diamond on it (Conrail probably couldn't figure out how to get that off there without knocking the huge structure down). What told the motive power story was seeing one EL GE U25B couple to three PC ones across from the engine house on another visit.
The Meadville Car Shops stayed open for a while until Conrail found a way to close them. Railroad employment of the former EL in Meadville, PA, went the way of Hornell, NY, Marion, OH, and other locations along the line. It was as a operator at MS Tower in Corry, PA, told me, "Conrail wanted the EL's business, but not the railroad." All the actions of then and the future along the line seemed to be in harmony with his words.
I'll end this with one more conversation with an ex-EL brakeman in Meadville regarding the changes, which reflects what Cactus Jack said was the feeling of many of the employees. This guy was a real "free spirit" of a person (sort of a wild man in a way), who told me that one hot day, he was switching in Meadville Yard without a shirt on. A supervisor spotted him from the yard tower, then came out telling him that "Penn Central" doesn't allow working without a shirt. The brakeman said, "You mean Conrail doesn't". The answer back was, "No. I mean Penn Central. Who do you think is running this show!"
I understood the EL employees feelings as their railroad and jobs disappeared, because watching how things went for the EL compared to most of the Penn Central, it became my belief also. Looking back, it sure made for a sad spiral down of a fascinating railroad with really friendly people.
XC