Erie Lackawanna
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From: "J DOT Henry Priebe Jr DOT " root AT bluemoon DOT net
Date: Thu, 13 May 2010 15:30:21 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: (erielack) What got you into the EL/Erie/DL&W?
"el426.jpg" - image/jpeg, 800x529 (256c)


I grew up about a mile from the EL's Erie and DL&W Black Rock branches. The
Erie's was long OOS by the time I started poking around the local RRs on my
own in my pre-teen years, but a lot of it was still intact. In Buffalo by the
70s the two biggest players in town were the PC and the EL. PC was mostly
boring black with mating worms, but the EL was in glorious GMY and really
stood out.

The EL and its ghosts have crossed my path in various ways pretty much
throughout my life. Some of my earliest memories involve the Erie. When I was
three years old I used to wait until my mom was asleep during my nap time and
I would sneak up to my grandparents' third floor (we lived with them for a
couple of years) where dad's Lionel trains were and I'd play with them until I
got bored or got caught. One of my favorite cars was the Erie bay window
caboose with the Radio Equipped lightning bolts on it. The next Easter, my mom
bought my dad the Erie Cop 'n Hobo animated gondola. I clearly remember it
sitting on the dining room table with our Easter Baskets. I still have both
those cars.

When I was a little kid (5, 6, 7 years old) in the mid-60s my neighbor used to
take a bunch of us neighborhood kids to Shoshone Park (near Main St in North
Buffalo) to swim in its pool on hot summer days. The Erie's Niagara Falls
Branch and the DL&W's Black Rock Branch both ran along the park's northern
boundary and EL trains ran by pretty frequently during the summer. I can
remember a lashup of GMY F units grinding by upgrade on the DL&W to the bridge
over the Erie at International Jct.

The NYC Belt Line was a block away from my house so it naturally became the
first spot I'd visit on my own. As I got more adventurous I would wander
further and further down the Belt Line toward Black Rock. I finally made it
all the way to the EL's yard and boy was that cool! Later on, while working
summers for my family's industrial piping business, starting at age 12, I'd
ride my bicycle down Niagara St to Black Rock Yard and watch EL or CN
switchers (depending on the year) shuttle cars back and forth across the
bridge and if I was lucky Amtrak and TH&B/CP were on time and I'd get to see E
units and Budd cars too. I attached a shot of EL NW2 426 shot in the summer of
1976 on one of those lunch hour trips, before CR defaced it.

When I'd get my $40 ($1 an hour before I turned 14) paycheck every Friday I
would head over to K-Val Hobbies and blow as much of it as I could on HO
trains. To get there I had to pass under both the Erie's and DL&W's Black Rock
branches on Elmwood Ave. Once in a while I would be rewarded with an EL train
on the DL&W. Man would I start pedaling harder if I heard one throttling up to
make the grade up and over the NYC's Niagara Branch coming out of Black Rock.

Right around April Fools C Day I stumbled upon FW Tower, an Erie armstrong
plant where the Erie crossed and/or connected with the Buffalo Creek, the PRR
and the NKP. I was off school for some reason and went downtown with mom when
she went to work. After lunch I decided to explore the tracks in the area and
ended up walking east down the Erie tracks. After about a mile, on the other
side of an underpass, I came across an interlocking with tracks going every
which way you could imagine. It was FW, but I didn't know that. It was the
most awesome place I had ever found. In the middle of the maze of tracks was
an abandoned tower with the stairs still on the side of it, so like any
curious teenager I had to investigate. I climbed the stairs and the door was
open so I went in. There was a guy sitting at a desk, OH NO it wasn't
abandoned! I was sure I that I was in big trouble this time. Scotty Whitehead,
the day trick operator, turned out to be as nice a guy as you'll ever meet and
we became fast friends. He taught me how to run the plant and how to smoke a
pipe as well! FW became a favorite place, I even took my dad there once.

From about 1979 to 1990 I got distracted by girls, sports, cars and partying
and trains faded into the background. Dad and I would occasionally do some
train related thing, but I wasn't actively railfanning at all. At the end of
the 80s dad divorced his second wife and started spending more time on
researching trains and taking short trips to ride excursions or poke around
the remains of one line or another and I usually tagged along. He always had
lots of magazines and books and as soon as he finished them he would hand them
down to me. The old train bug bit again and I spent more and more time
reading, railfanning and poking around the remains of railroading in Buffalo.
Our trips became more frequent and we hit active spots like Portage,
Hornell, Corning, Binghamton, Scranton and Hoboken as well as long gone spots
like the terminal at Oswego.

I lost my only railfanning buddy when dad died in the mid 90s. My interest in
trains turned into somewhat of an obsession, I guess because it helped me feel
closer to dad after he was gone. I somehow ended up talking to Devan Lawton
and he turned me on to the ELHS. The internet and my business had just started
to take off and every day there was more and more train info and photos
available online. I started Railfan.net, sort of as a memorial to dad, and
ended up hosting the EL list. While I am a fan of many RRs, particularly those
that ran to or through Buffalo, the EL is the one RR about which I learn
something new almost every day, primarily due to this list.

The DL&W as some family ties as well. My mom and my grandparents rode the DL&W
from Buffalo to get to my grandparents' summer house on Keuka Lake. Mom told
me how she and grandmother used to ride the Phoebe from Buffalo to NYC.
Apparently the DL&W was their RR of choice, probably due to its route through
Bath, close to the lake house.

What a long strage trip it has been, I hope it lasts a lot longer!

Henry

J. Henry Priebe Jr. Blue Moon Internet Corp Network Administrator
www.bluemoon.net Internet Access & Web Hosting
www.railfan.net Railfan Network Services


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