CONRAIL BY OTTO M. VONDRAK/ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR, PHOTOS AS NOTED


WHEN CONGRESS CREATED THE PLAN for the Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail), railroads in the Northeast were on the verge of crisis. Conrail was tasked with rebuilding a freight rail- road network that was drained by the Penn Central bankruptcy and weak- ened by crushing debt and tax burdens. Seemingly lost in the shuffle were the myriad commuter trains operated throughout the new railroad’s 17,000 mile territory. When Conrail began op- erations on April 1, 1976, they quickly became the nation’s second-busiest passenger carrier with commuter serv- ices in Boston, Chicago, New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Baltimore.


Conrail inherited these passenger operations and continued to operate them based on existing contracts, though in many cases the subsidies were not enough to cover costs. The


44 APRIL 2013 • RAILFAN.COM


Staggers Act of 1980 deregulated the industry and gave Conrail more free- dom to set rates, but the commuter bur- den was still a drain on revenues. The Northeast Rail Services Act of 1981 di- rected Conrail to transfer its commuter trains to local authorities or a new gov- ernment subsidiary by the end of 1982. This month we wrap-up a three-part


series taking a look at how Metro- North, NJ Transit, and SEPTA have evolved since taking over from Conrail. But what happened to the trains that were not transferred to new operators on January 1, 1983?


Cleveland-Youngstown (1976-1977) Erie Lackawanna got out of the long- distance passenger business with the last run of the Lake Cities in 1970, leav- ing only its extensive network of com- muter operations in suburban New Jer- sey, and a single train that ran between


CLEVELAND Warren OHIO Youngstown


Cleveland and Youngstown. Many of the riders came from Cleveland’s east- ern suburbs, and they were instrumen- tal in keeping the train running into the Conrail era. As part of the Conrail takeover in 1976, the old EL offices in downtown Cleveland were closed. By this time, the train was mostly carrying railroad workers riding on free passes, and ridership dropped off dramatically.


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