JohnChic.com

The Erie Terminal Building

Posted September 27th, 2008 by johnchic

The Erie Terminal Building is located in Youngstown, Ohio on Commerce Street between Hazel and Phelps.  It served as the passenger terminal as well as division offices along with offices of several bussinesses and professionals.  As a child I would wait on the platform at the back of the building for the train to take my parents and me to Pittsburgh to visit family.  We made this trip several times a year.  Although we rode the P&LE to Pittsburgh it was actually an Erie headlight that I would see rounding the bend and pulling into the station.  The Erie would handle the train from Cleveland to Youngstown and then turn it over to the P&LE to take it to Pittsburgh.  Motive power consisted of many different engines, from big handsome Alco PAs to ordinary GP7s depending on the train.  Some were through trains to Chicago in which case the Youngstown coaches were set off  there while the train continued on.  As I said earlier, I would wait on that platform for many a year, up until the year when the service was discontinued.  It ws an Easter Sunday in the early 60s that we went to get the train and the station agent told us that the service had been discontinued.   From that day on we rode the Greyhound.  Trips to Pittsburgh would never be the same.  Gone were the days of riding in the last coach and watching the ribbon of track unravel from beneath the train.  Gone were nights staring out the rain-streaked windows and watching the flashing crossing lights.  Gone were the trips to grand P&LE station on Smithfield Street in Pittsburgh where I would listen to the announcer call out the names of all those towns along the route: Coraopolis, Aliquippa, Beaver, Beaver Falls and New Brighton, Wampum, Ellwood City and New Castle.  Yes those memorable trips are gone.  The towns remain, some of the stations remain,  some of the trackage remains as freights still travel the route but the passenger trains are gone.  Maybe, with the high cost of gas, the powers-that-be will once again see the wisdom of the passenger trains, but until then all I’m left with are the memories and my models that help he hold on to them.