Erie Lackawanna U25C No. 2526 and E8A No. 827 pull an eastbound intermodal train in Akron in April 1973. The train is passing the former Erie passenger station. The 827 probably arrived here with the Lake Cities many times until that train was discontinued in early 1970.
Photograph by Robert Farkas
I’ve long thought my favorite E8As are Southern Railway E8As. The Erie Lackawanna had my second favorite E8As. EL 830 is getting fueled as it stops at the EL passenger station in Kent in the late 1960s. Soon, it and the Lake Cities will be westbound for Chicago. The man seen on the left is Mike Ondecker and the worker is unidentified.
Article and Photograph by Robert Farkas
Erie Lackawanna E8A No. 826 works in Akron in 1973. By then passenger service had been gone for three years and passenger locomotives had been redeployed into freight service. The 826 was built in February 1951 for the Erie Railroad and carried the same roster number. If you look around the edges you can see tiny slivers of the Erie passenger and freight stations.
Photograph by Robert Farkas
The wayback machine has landed us trackside along the Erie Lackawanna mainline in Kent in the late 1960s.
You’ve got black and white negative film loaded in your camera and show time is at hand as the westbound Lake Cities is about to make its station stop.
Led by E8A No. 822, it will pass by us before stopping. The roof of the passenger station is above the first cars.
The photographer is standing on the Akron Union Station platform on a rainy day while Erie Lackawanna E8A Nos. 830 and EL 832 pass by westbound with the Lake Cities one mid-year morning in the late 1960s.
Note that EL 830 has no portholes and EL 832 has three. The Lake Cities used the former Erie passenger depot that was out of view to the left of the photographer.
It would be the last EL passenger train in Akron and made its final trips in January 1970.
By the time the photographer caught up to Erie Lackawanna E8A No. 830 in Kent in May 1973, the carrier had been out of the intercity rail passenger business for more than three years.
In any event, Amtrak was two years old and its seems unlikely that even if EL’s Lake Cities had survived until the coming of Amtrak that it would have been picked up and kept going.
No. 830 began life in March 1951 for the Erie Railroad so Kent was a place it likely had seen many times over the years while pulling such trains as the Lake Cities, Phoebe Snow and Midlander.
Interestingly it wore roster number 830 during its service to the Erie.
It is shown here in freight service, which is how some EL passenger diesels spent their last years for the carrier.
Is there such as thing as having too many photographs of Erie Lackawanna E units? In theory, yes, but in practice we don’t think so.
In the 1970s and the EL is using former passenger covered wagons to haul freights between Marion and Chicago. The last EL intrercity passenger train completed its runs in January 1970 and the units were needed in freight service.
The EL was a financially struggling railroad that in 1976 would be folded into Conrail. But its still had a lot of pride left and it kept units such as E8A No. 831 looking spiffy.
Conrail didn’t want the EL route west of Marion and it ceased to serve as a through route on the first day of Conrail.
Today, much of the former Erie Railroad mainline west of Marion is abandoned.
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