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45-583: The railroad converted the hotel into offices and sleeping quarters for railroad personnel c. 1903. Alterations were made to the building in 1913 and 1917. The Erie Railroad merged into the Erie Lackawanna Railroad in 1960, which ended passenger train service over the former Erie Delaware Division through Susquehanna in 1966. The last passenger trains were the Atlantic Express / Pacific Express and unnamed trains to Binghamton timed to meet up with

90-406: A Bombardier MultiLevel Coach into Erie Lackawanna colors. Reporting mark A reporting mark is a code used to identify owners or lessees of rolling stock and other equipment used on certain rail transport networks. The code typically reflects the name or identifying number of the owner, lessee, or operator of the equipment, similar to IATA airline designators . In North America ,

135-674: A 2-digit code indicating the vehicle's register country . The registered keeper of a vehicle is now indicated by a separate Vehicle Keeper Marking (VKM), usually the name of the owning company or an abbreviation thereof, which must be registered with the Intergovernmental Organisation for International Carriage by Rail (OTIF) and the European Union Agency for Railways (ERA) and which is unique throughout Europe and parts of Asia and Northern Africa. The VKM must be between two and five letters in length and can use any of

180-587: A heavy debt burden. Therefore, it initially declined interest in joining the Consolidated Rail Corporation ( Conrail ) takeover of the other major bankrupt eastern lines. The preliminary (PSP) and final (FSP) system plans for Conrail showed the EL being merged into the Chessie System . Also, by 1975, the economy in the eastern United States was gravely affected by the 1973 oil crisis , quashing any hopes of

225-512: A hotel for the same number of people. This was the first depot constructed entirely out of brick in the United States, containing a 2,400 volume library, a reading room and the lecture room. By 1863, the shops in Susquehanna employed 700 men (up from the original 350) in the community with a $ 38,000/year total payroll. The master mechanic of the shops, James Gregg, worked to renovate and improve

270-461: A hyphen. Some examples: When a vehicle is sold it will not normally be transferred to another register. The Czech railways bought large numbers of coaches from ÖBB. The number remained the same but the VKM changed from A-ÖBB to A-ČD. The UIC introduced a uniform numbering system for their members based on a 12-digit number, largely known as UIC number . The third and fourth digit of the number indicated

315-500: A larger lecture hall for workers, with a capacity of 600 people. The Erie also constructed the Starrucca House, which contained a dining hall that was 120 feet (37 m) by 40 feet (12 m) and was a hotel for passengers. The construction of the Starrucca House was necessary as a layover stop for engines coming out of Gulf Summit, New York that had to deal with the steep grade. The depot could feed 200 people and provide room as

360-685: A predecessor of the CNW, from which the UP inherited it. Similarly, during the breakup of Conrail , the long-retired marks of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) and New York Central Railroad (NYC) were temporarily brought back and applied to much of Conrail's fleet to signify which cars and locomotives were to go to CSX (all cars labeled NYC) and which to Norfolk Southern (all cars labeled PRR). Some of these cars still retain their temporary NYC marks. Because of its size, this list has been split into subpages based on

405-536: The Phoebe Snow . All remaining passenger service, on the former Lackawanna route via Scranton, Pennsylvania , was discontinued on January 6, 1970. The station was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. The New York, Lake Erie and Western Railway constructed the railroad through a dense forest in 1848 as a central spot for their work between Piermont and Dunkirk, New York . At that point,

450-599: The Erie Lackawanna Railroad until 1968, was formed from the 1960 merger of the Erie Railroad and the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad . The official motto of the line was "The Friendly Service Route". Like many railroads in the northeast already financially vulnerable from the expanding U.S. Interstate Highway System , the line was severely weakened fiscally by the extent, duration and record flood levels due to Hurricane Agnes in 1972. It would never recover. Most of

495-493: The Hudson River . The northeast's railroads, including the EL, were all beginning to decline because of over-regulation, subsidized highway and waterway competition, commuter operations and market saturation (i.e., too many railroad lines competing for what market was remaining). The closure in the 1960s of old multi-story factories in the eastern cities, followed by the decline of the domestic automobile and steel industry in

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540-563: The Norfolk and Western Railway , which had bought the railroad. On April 1, the assets were transferred as a condition of the proposed but never-consummated merger between the N&;W and Chesapeake and Ohio Railway . Dereco also owned the Delaware & Hudson Railway at the time. In 1972, Hurricane Agnes destroyed many miles of track and related assets, especially in northeastern Pennsylvania and New York State's Southern Tier. The cost of repairs, and

585-688: The 1970s, eroded much of the EL's traditional traffic base. Also, due to government regulation policy formulated in the late 19th century, the EL and other railroads could not immediately abandon long-distance passenger runs, despite the fact that competition from airlines , bus lines and the private automobile made them unprofitable. However, the EL did post profits in the mid and late-1960s through heavy cost-cutting (reduction of parallel services), equipment modernization, suburban industrial development, increased piggy-back trailer traffic and steady reduction of long-distance passenger train service, which ended on January 6, 1970. Also, additional rail traffic

630-504: The 26 letters of the Latin alphabet . Diacritical marks may also be used, but they are ignored in data processing (for example, Ö is treated as though it is O ). The VKM is preceded by the code for the country (according to the alphabetical coding system described in Appendix 4 to the 1949 convention and Article 45(4) of the 1968 convention on road traffic), where the vehicle is registered and

675-443: The EL being able to independently compete with government-rehabilitated Conrail lines. Therefore, the EL petitioned and was accepted into Conrail at the last minute. In 1976, much of the company's railroad assets were thus purchased by the federal government and combined with other companies' railroad assets to form Conrail. An independent Erie Lackawanna Estate continued in existence for several years thereafter. This estate liquidated

720-624: The EL's Employees Timetable Number 3, New York Division, showed its fastest comparable schedule to be 28 hours and 45 minutes. By 1973, the Penn Central's fastest piggyback service between these points was shown in the Official Guide to be 26 hours and 15 minutes, while the EL's Employees Timetable Number 4 showed that the EL's fastest comparable schedule was 29 and 1/2 hours. After its 1972 bankruptcy, EL management attempted to plot an independent course, anticipating financial reorganization without

765-581: The EL's marginal non-railroad assets and distributed the railroad purchase funds to satisfy much of the large debt burden that the EL and its predecessors had accumulated. The EL's creditors gained more by selling the line's assets than by continuing its traditional business operations. The Erie Lackawanna's former commuter services are operated by NJ Transit and Metro-North ; non-electrified service operates to and from Hoboken Terminal; electrified lines use both Hoboken Terminal and Pennsylvania Station as terminals. Metro-North and NJ Transit share operation of

810-554: The Erie and the DL&;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 late 1940s. The Erie was burdened by the continuing loss of high-tariff fruit and vegetable traffic from

855-590: The Metrolink system—even though it is operated by Amtrak. This is why the reporting mark for CSX Transportation , which is an operating railroad, is CSXT instead of CSX. Private (non-common carrier) freight car owners in Mexico were issued, up until around 1990, reporting marks ending in two X's, possibly to signify that their cars followed different regulations (such as bans on friction bearing trucks) than their American counterparts and so their viability for interchange service

900-723: The Port Jervis and Pascack Valley Lines, while NJ Transit operates the Main, Montclair-Boonton, Morristown, Bergen County, and Gladstone Lines. Track reconstruction is underway that could restore regular service along the Lackawanna Cut-Off from Port Morris Junction, New Jersey to the Pennsylvania border at the Delaware River (28.45 miles) and extend service into northeastern Pennsylvania, possibly as far as Scranton. The Erie portion of

945-657: The VKM BLS. Example for an "Einheitswagen" delivered in 1957: In the United Kingdom, prior to nationalisation, wagons owned by the major railways were marked with codes of two to four letters, these codes normally being the initials of the railway concerned; for example, wagons of the Great Western Railway were marked "G W"; those of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway were marked "L M S", etc. The codes were agreed between

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990-571: The Western New York and Pennsylvania Railroad. Most trackage in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois is a thing of the past. In September 2015, Norfolk Southern revealed EMD SD45-2 1700, which had been painted back to its as-built Erie Lackawanna color scheme at Chattanooga, Tennessee . This is the second unit from an NS predecessor painted back into its original colors. In 2019, as part of its 40th anniversary, New Jersey Transit wrapped ALP-45DP 4519 and

1035-531: The acquiring company discontinues the name or mark of the acquired company, the discontinued mark is referred to as a "fallen flag" railway. Occasionally, long-disused marks are suddenly revived by the companies which now own them. For example, in recent years, the Union Pacific Railroad has begun to use the mark CMO on newly built covered hoppers, gondolas and five-bay coal hoppers. CMO originally belonged to Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Railway ,

1080-737: The corporation's holdings became part of Conrail in 1976, ending its sixteen years as an independent operating railroad company. The Interstate Commerce Commission approved the merger on Sept. 13, 1960, and on Oct. 17 the Erie Railroad and Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad merged to form the Erie Lackawanna Railroad. 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 and extensive, money-losing commuter operations. These two historic lines,

1125-448: The first letter of the reporting mark: A railway vehicle must be registered in the relevant state's National Vehicle Register (NVR), as part of which process it will be assigned a 12-digit European Vehicle Number (EVN). The EVN schema is essentially the same as that used by the earlier UIC numbering systems for tractive vehicles and wagons , except that it replaces the 2-digit vehicle owner's code (see § Europe 1964 to 2005 ) with

1170-519: The home country may also be included. The Association of American Railroads (AAR) assigns marks to all carriers, under authority granted by the U.S. Surface Transportation Board , Transport Canada , and Mexican Government. Railinc , a subsidiary of the AAR, maintains the active reporting marks for the North American rail industry. Under current practice, the first letter must match the initial letter of

1215-407: The leaders of the strike at Susquehanna, which caused things to get worse. The shop workers disabled locomotives and put them in a roundhouse , while stranding cars of coal and fuel on sidings in the area. Workers kept mechanical pieces of engines hostage and put them elsewhere in the town. The railroad was on the attack end of the media and the government, who sympathized with the workers. M.M. Helme,

1260-525: The local Sheriff, refused to have the strikers chased off the property. The Governor of Pennsylvania , John F. Hartranft told the railroad that only the Sheriff could request state troops to come in and the latter refused to do so, along with several leading citizens of the village. The lawyers of the railroad soon learned that the trains down the line were being affected by the strike, only then causing Helme to call-in troops. The railroad offered that, in ending

1305-601: The loss of revenue, forced the company into bankruptcy , filing for reorganization under Section 77 of the Federal Bankruptcy Act on June 26. The completion of the Interstate 80 highway across Pennsylvania and New Jersey by 1971 added to the Erie Lackawanna's financial problems, as it diverted piggyback traffic previously garnered from less than truckload shipping companies such as Navajo and Cooper-Jarrett. EL

1350-415: The mark, which consists of an alphabetic code of two to four letters, is stenciled on each piece of equipment, along with a one- to six-digit number. This information is used to uniquely identify every such rail car or locomotive, thus allowing it to be tracked by the railroad it is traveling over, which shares the information with other railroads and customers. In multinational registries, a code indicating

1395-522: The original Mainline between Port Jervis and Binghamton is operated by the CNYK . The Lackawanna Railroad mainline west of Portland is operated by the Delaware-Lackawanna Railroad to Scranton ; then by Norfolk Southern north to Binghamton. Norfolk Southern also operates from Binghamton to Buffalo on the Erie mainline, with the former Chicago mainline that heads west at Hornell operated by

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1440-557: The owner of a reporting mark is taken over by another company, the old mark becomes the property of the new company. For example, when the Union Pacific Railroad (mark UP) acquired the Chicago and North Western Railway (mark CNW) in 1995, it retained the CNW mark rather than immediately repaint all acquired equipment. Some companies own several marks that are used to identify different classes of cars, such as boxcars or gondolas. If

1485-405: The owner, or more precisely the keeper of the vehicle. Thus each UIC member got a two-digit owner code . With the introduction of national vehicle registers this code became a country code. Some vehicles had to be renumbered as a consequence. The Swiss company BLS Lötschbergbahn had the owner code 63. When their vehicles were registered, they got numbers with the country code 85 for Switzerland and

1530-515: The payment until March 25. The workers at the shop agreed with the delay, but stated that they were willing to walk off the job on March 25 if they were not paid. That day, the Erie announced that they had to pay workers on other parts of the railroad. Denied their wages, the railroad shop workers told the managers to leave the premises and took over the facilities. They demanded that, if the railroad did not pay within 24 hours, they would begin to stop trains from running. The railroad responded by firing

1575-518: The railroad name. As it also acts as a Standard Carrier Alpha Code , the reporting mark cannot conflict with codes in use by other nonrail carriers. Marks ending with the letter "X" are assigned to companies or individuals who own railcars, but are not operating railroads; for example, the TTX Company (formerly Trailer Train Company) is named for its original reporting mark of TTX. In another example,

1620-727: The railways and registered with the Railway Clearing House . In India, wagons owned by the Indian Railways are marked with codes of two to four letters, these codes normally being the initials of the railway divisions concerned along with the Hindi abbreviation; for example, trains of the Western Railway zone are marked "WR" and "प रे"; those of the Central Railway zone are marked "CR" and "मध्य", etc. The codes are agreed between

1665-624: The reporting mark for state-funded Amtrak services in California is CDTX (whereas the usual Amtrak mark is AMTK) because the state transportation agency ( Caltrans ) owns the equipment used in these services. This may also apply to commuter rail, for example Metrolink in Southern California uses the reporting mark SCAX because the equipment is owned by the Southern California Regional Rail Authority —which owns

1710-449: The shops, which were consistent fire risks. Construction of the shops began that year at a cost of $ 1.25 million (1865 USD ), along with $ 500,000 in tools and machinery, on an 8-acre site. 8 acres (3.2 ha). In March 1874, the Erie fell behind paying its workers at the Susquehanna shops. On March 15, the day the railroad promised that it would pay its workers, they announced that finances were even worse and would have to delay

1755-410: The state of New Jersey during the late 1960s for adequate subsidy and for the purchase of new engines and coaches. The EL also gained a lucrative contract with United Parcel Service in 1970, which led to the operation of five dedicated intermodal trains daily between New Jersey and Chicago. The Erie Lackawanna Railway was formed on March 1, 1968, as a subsidiary of Dereco, the holding company of

1800-439: The strike, all but the spokespeople for the strike would get their jobs back, which was refused. With that refusal, the railroad threatened to move its shops to Elmira, New York , which would affect the local economy, causing their support to dwindle further. The strike ended within hours of that, with workers returning to their jobs. Erie Lackawanna Railroad The Erie Lackawanna Railway ( reporting mark EL ), known as

1845-531: The village was nameless and had only one farm on the land nearby. That year, the railroad purchased 300 acres (120 ha) along the Susquehanna River for repair shops and other necessary facilities. Constructions at Susquehanna included the large machine shop, (774 feet (236 m) by 138 feet (42 m)) with room for up to 40 locomotives; the boiler shop; blacksmith's shop; pattern shop; paint shop; foundry; and engine rooms for them. The facilities included

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1890-662: The western states into the New York City region as highways improved in the 1950s. Both lines were also affected 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, Duluth, Chicago, etc. The DL&W had previously carried much traffic to and from ocean ships, having its own port facilities at Hoboken Terminal on

1935-575: Was able, however, to land large contracts with UPS because of its ability to move piggyback traffic between Chicago and the New York metropolitan area more reliably, although not faster than Penn Central (and formerly, New York Central ). For example, in 1971, the Penn Central advertised a 24 and 1/2 hour piggyback service from Metro New York to Metro Chicago in the Official Guide of the Railways , while

1980-564: Was impaired. This often resulted in five-letter reporting marks, an option not otherwise allowed by the AAR. Companies owning trailers used in trailer-on-flatcar service are assigned marks ending with the letter "Z", and the National Motor Freight Traffic Association , which maintains the list of Standard Carrier Alpha Codes, assigns marks ending in "U" to owners of intermodal containers . The standard ISO 6346 covers identifiers for intermodal containers. When

2025-511: Was temporarily diverted to the EL because of service problems on the troubled Penn Central lines, which the EL largely paralleled. The EL built a state of the art diesel engine repair facility in Marion, Ohio , and upgraded a large car repair shop in Meadville, Pennsylvania . As to its money-losing suburban passenger train services in the New York City metropolitan region, the EL had come to terms with

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