Western Erie county rail line: Active or not? (Philadelphia, Pittsburgh: oil, electric)

[sirron]

Just south of route 90 in western Erie county is a railroad. I need to know if it is active, or has it been turned into a rails-to-trails type of thing. Any info appreciated - thanks much!

[Wells5]

I would suggest contacting the Lake Shore Railway Museum in the Borough of Northeast. Someone associated with the museum should be able to help you.

[sirron]

Thanks so much! I had no idea who to contact. Will do.

[2nd trick op]

Two rail lines run parallel to Interstate 90 and the Lake Erie shore for the entire length of Erie County; both are heavy duty main lines and both are very active, but the double-tracked CSX (former New York Central) is far busier than the single-tracked Norfolk Southern (former New York, Chicago and St. Louis, but commonly called the Nickel Plate).

Closer to Erie proper there is a mile or so of straight trackage with multiple rails that can accommodate several gagues, and also, overhead electric catenary (wiring) running parallel to CSX -- this is the East Erie Commercial Railroad, used by General electric to test locomotives, sometimes for export, built at GE's Erie plant.

Erie County also hosts a portion of the Bessemer and Lake Erie, a former U S Steel property which runs from Conneaut, OH south to a complex of USS facilities and spread all over greater Pittsburgh, served by the Union Railroad, another former USS chattel. Traffic is almost exclusively iron ore southbound and bituminous coal northbound.

At one time, Erie county also had the Pennsylvania Railroad's original main line from Philadelphia to Erie via Williamsport, Emporium and Corry, and the Chautauqua Branch, which diverged from the lake-parallel main lines somewhere west of Erie and meandered southward to Oil City and Pittsburgh, but these lines were a casualty of the railroads merging into larger systems more oriented toward high-volume freight service and "unselling" smaller, less-frequent shipments. It's possible that portions of those lines have been converted to rails-to-trails use.