Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad: Map, Rosters, Photos

Last revised: September 23, 2026

The Pittsburgh & Lake Erie was the New York Central’s way into the steel city, and it never needed many miles to matter. The owned railroad ran from Haselton, in Youngstown, through Pittsburgh and up the Youghiogheny to Connellsville, with a branch to Brownsville. It did not lay its own rail to the lake. Ore came off the Central’s docks and met the P&LE at Youngstown. Coal and coke came off the Monongahela. The tonnage was so far out of proportion to the mileage that the railroad was called the Little Giant. It outlived the Central and it outlived Penn Central. The last P&LE train ran on September 11, 1992. CSX’s Three Rivers Railway took the lines CSX wanted.

Five Pittsburgh and Lake Erie GP38s lead westbound freight LT-29 across the diamond at Blasdell, New York, on August 20, 1988

Five Pittsburgh & Lake Erie GP38s lead westbound freight LT-29 across the diamond at Blasdell, New York, on August 20, 1988. A Buffalo Southern freight waits in the distance. Doug Kroll photo.

On this page: At a glance · McCreery’s railroad · The Central’s subsidiary · Steel, coal, and the Monongahela · Passengers · Free again · Steam · Diesels · Sources

At a glance

The Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad mark. Author’s work.

Item	Detail
Railroad	Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad. The Little Giant. Mark PLE
Headquarters	Pittsburgh
Charter	Organized May 11, 1875. Pennsylvania letters patent May 18, 1875. William McCreery and associates
Opened	February 10, 1879, Pittsburgh to Haselton, in Youngstown. The Ohio end was the Youngstown & Pittsburgh, chartered April 30, 1877, and folded in during 1878
Owned ends	Youngstown–Pittsburgh–McKeesport–Connellsville, and McKeesport–Brownsville. About 231 miles in 1930. Busy stretches of the main line were four tracks
The lake	Not on the owned railroad. Ore moved on the New York Central beyond Youngstown. Trackage rights to Ashtabula Harbor came in 1976
Control	New York Central affiliation from 1883. John Newell, of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, became president in 1887. Never merged into the Central
Penn Central	February 1, 1968. Left out of Conrail. Stock-sale contract February 26, 1979. Closed May 15, 1979
Last day	September 11, 1992. Three Rivers Railway, a CSX subsidiary, took the lines CSX wanted. Still a separate CSX company in 2016
Rosters	On this page. George Drury’s steam guide has no Pittsburgh & Lake Erie chapter

The 1930 mileage is the long-published system figure. Information compiled September 23, 2026.

McCreery’s railroad

William McCreery and a group of Pittsburgh men organized the company on May 11, 1875, and Pennsylvania issued the letters patent on May 18. The point was a local railroad that did not have to pay the Pennsylvania Railroad’s price to move iron, coal, and finished steel around the city. McCreery could not raise the money. A second group took the project in 1877 and got some grading done along the Beaver River near Beaver Falls, and not much else.

The money that finished it came from two places that already understood Pittsburgh. The Harmony Society, the communal congregation at Economy, put capital in. So did William Henry Vanderbilt’s Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, which wanted a friendly road from the lakes into the mills. Andrew Carnegie backed it for the same reason McCreery had: a route that was not the Pennsylvania. Ohio chartered the Youngstown & Pittsburgh on April 30, 1877, to build the western end. The two companies were consolidated in 1878. Construction in earnest was that year. On February 10, 1879, the railroad opened from Pittsburgh to Haselton.

Official 1910 system map of the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad

An official system map of the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie, 1910. Author’s collection.

The Central’s subsidiary

The University of Pittsburgh’s inventory of the company records dates the New York Central affiliation to 1883. The Central never merged the Little Giant away. It held the stock, it supplied officers, and it left the P&LE a separate corporation with its own locomotives and its own mark. In 1887 John Newell, president of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, took the P&LE presidency as well. By 1890 the short railroad was one of the heavy freight routes in the East.

The southeast end was a lease, not a new main-line charter. On January 1, 1884, the P&LE leased the Pittsburgh, McKeesport & Youghiogheny, the line that put it up the river toward Connellsville. The McKeesport & Belle Vernon, folded into that property in 1890, was the short piece from McKeesport down to Belle Vernon. Brownsville, a little farther down the Monongahela, was where this railroad met the Pennsylvania and, with it, built the coal road south.

A circa 1960 system map of the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad

A system map of the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie, about 1960. Author’s work.

Steel, coal, and the Monongahela

The railroad made its money because the shippers sat on top of it. Ore came south from the Central’s lake docks to Youngstown and then onto the P&LE for the mills. Coal came out of the middle of Pennsylvania. Coke, the coal cooked down for the blast furnace, moved in its own trains. Finished steel moved back out. Brian Solomon and Mike Schafer, writing on the New York Central, record years when that concentration of heavy shippers produced on the order of $100,000 a mile and a dividend of 12 percent. Busy stretches of the Youngstown–Pittsburgh main were widened to four tracks. The nickname followed the tonnage.

South of Brownsville the coal was the Monongahela. The Monongahela Railroad was incorporated on December 31, 1900, by the Pennsylvania and the P&LE, to build from Brownsville Junction down the east bank to the mines at Martin. The Baltimore & Ohio took a one-third share in 1927. The P&LE was an owner, not the operator of that whole railroad. Conrail absorbed the Monongahela on May 1, 1993.

From 1934 the Baltimore & Ohio also bought trackage rights over the P&LE from McKeesport to New Castle. The B&O’s own line through Pittsburgh was a chain of grades and curves. The Little Giant’s river grade was the better road, and the B&O, then the Chessie System, then CSX, used it as if it were their own.

Passengers

A railroad this short was not a passenger railroad. The Central’s Pittsburgh connections used a small group of Alco PA passenger diesels numbered in the 4200s. The Steel King ran through to Cleveland. Those trains, and the rest of the through service, ended in January 1957, when the mail contracts were cancelled.

Pittsburgh and Lake Erie GP7 5735 leading commuter train 273 out of Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, on September 1, 1965

Pittsburgh & Lake Erie GP7 #5735 has commuter train #273 leaving Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, on September 1, 1965. Roger Puta photo.

What lasted was a weekday commuter train between Pittsburgh and Beaver Falls, in former New York Central day coaches, behind GP7s that still carried steam generators. The railroad tried to drop it in 1978. Local opposition and a Pennsylvania subsidy kept it a few years more. The last train ran on July 12, 1985.

Pittsburgh and Lake Erie GP7s 1501 and 1500, the steam-generator commuter engines, on October 19, 1980

GP7s #1501 and #1500, the steam-generator pair kept for the commuter train, on October 19, 1980. Doug Kroll photo.

A 1969 official list of Pittsburgh and Lake Erie lines and branches

A 1969 official list of the main line and the branches then in operation.

Free again

On February 1, 1968, the P&LE became a subsidiary of the Penn Central without ever having been merged into the Central. It was still profitable, and the parent used it. Lee Gregory, in "The Little Giant, Free Again" (Trains, July 1981), put the bill the bankrupt parent had left on the subsidiary at about $15 million, counting unpaid per-diem charges and joint-facility fees. Penn Central owned about 92.6 percent of the stock and still wanted the payments the old Central agreements required. The two companies went to court over that bill.

Conrail was not going to be allowed to swallow a railroad that was making money. The P&LE stayed out of the April 1, 1976, conveyance. In that same year it received trackage rights over former Penn Central lines from Youngstown to Ashtabula Harbor, which is the first time its trains reached Lake Erie, and they reached it on someone else’s rail. Penn Central signed away its stock on February 26, 1979. The buyer was a new Pittsburgh & Lake Erie company, backed by local investors and by Beloit Corporation of Wisconsin. That sale closed on May 15, 1979. On August 30, 1979, the remaining minority shares were cashed out and the old company survived as the subsidiary of the new one.

The mills did not survive the new owner. Into the early 1980s the railroad was still moving on the order of 23 million tons a year tied to steel. Then the mills closed. Railroad Development Corporation agreed in 1990 to buy the railroad. The purchase did not stay closed. In July 1991 CSX, which already held the old B&O rights over the McKeesport–Pittsburgh–New Castle main, bought that line and leased it back. The last day the P&LE operated was September 11, 1992. CSX had formed the Three Rivers Railway, named for the Allegheny, the Monongahela, and the Ohio, and that subsidiary took the lines CSX wanted. The parent company kept the rest. Its shell continued as Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Properties. Three Rivers stayed a CSX company. On August 26, 2016, CSX Transportation filed to merge it in. The exemption took effect on September 11, 2016. The river main line is still on the CSX map, operated as CSX.

Pittsburgh and Lake Erie bay-window caboose 503 at the rear of a freight at Buffalo, New York, on July 23, 1988

Bay-window caboose #503 brings up a freight at Buffalo, New York, on July 23, 1988. Doug Kroll photo.

Steam

George H. Drury’s Guide to North American Steam Locomotives has no Pittsburgh & Lake Erie chapter, so this page does not invent a unit grid for the older classes. The class letters below are the railroad’s own, which is why a Berkshire can sit in class A next to an 0-4-0. They are not New York Central class letters.

The one modern class with a full public record is the A-2a. Alco at Schenectady built seven 2-8-4s, 9400–9406, in May and June 1948. Lima built the tenders. They were Alco’s last steam locomotives for a railroad in the United States: 63-inch drivers, 26-by-32-inch cylinders, 230 pounds of boiler pressure, about 67,100 pounds of tractive effort, engine weight 426,000 pounds. They were retired in August 1956 and scrapped in 1957. None was saved. The older power was 0-4-0s and 0-6-0s, Americans, Atlantics, Ten-Wheelers, Consolidations, Mikados, and Pacifics, in the classes in the table.

Class	Type	Arrangement	Numbers	Notes
A-1	Switcher	0-4-0	—	Railroad class letter. No Drury grid
A-2a	Berkshire	2-8-4	9400–9406	7 engines. Alco, May–June 1948. Alco’s last U.S. steam. Retired August 1956. Scrapped 1957. None saved
B-2 through B-6	Switcher	0-6-0	—	Railroad class letters
D	American	4-4-0	—	Several D subclasses
E-1	Atlantic	4-4-2	—
G-1 through G-3	Ten-Wheeler	4-6-0	—
H-1 through H-3	Consolidation	2-8-0	—
H-8, H-10A	Mikado	2-8-2	—	The railroad’s H for the Mikado, not a New York Central H-10
K-4A, K-4B	Pacific	4-6-2	—

Diesels

The diesel fleet is small enough to stay on this page, and it is already a model list rather than a construction-number roster. The numbers sit in New York Central blocks, because that is how a Central subsidiary was numbered. Paint, while the Central still set the style, was the lightning stripe or the two-tone gray, or the P&LE’s own green and black with white lettering. After 1979 the independent railroad went to black with yellow lettering and the company herald on the nose.

The PAs in the 4200s were the passenger engines for the Pittsburgh connections. The GP7s include the steam-generator pair, 1500 and 1501, kept as long as the Beaver Falls commuter train ran. The later GP38s came off Penn Central. The GP38-2s came off the Rock Island.

Model	Numbers	Built	Qty	Notes
Alco PA-1	4204–4207	1949	4	Pittsburgh passenger connections
Alco PA-2	4213–4214	1952	2
Alco RS-3	8353–8357	1953	5
Alco S-2	8537–8549	1948–1949	13
Alco S-4	8633–8667	1953	35
FM H10-44	9100–9103	1946–1948	4
EMD NW2	8705–8714, 8740–8749	1947–1949	20
EMD SW9	8931–8940, 8952–8961	1951–1952	20
EMD GP7	5676–5685, 5713–5737	1951–1953	35	1500 and 1501, with steam generators, were the commuter pair
EMD SW1500	1534–1563, 9280–9289	1971–1973	40
EMD MP15DC	1574–1598, 5030–5039	1974–1975	35
EMD GP38	2025–2041	1969	17	Ex-Penn Central
EMD GP38-2	2051–2056, 2057–2060	1976–1977	10	Ex-Rock Island
GE U28B	2800–2821	1966	22

Sources

University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad Company records, 1860–1999. Operation from 1879 after the 1878 consolidation with the Youngstown & Pittsburgh. New York Central affiliation from 1883. Harmony Society and Lake Shore financing. Trackage rights to Ashtabula Harbor in 1976. Sale to CSX dated 1993 in that inventory.
Lee Gregory, "The Little Giant, Free Again," Trains, July 1981. The debt the bankrupt parent left on the subsidiary.
Field v. Allyn, Delaware Court of Chancery, affirmed 467 A.2d 1274 (Del. 1983). Penn Central’s 92.6 percent. Contract February 26, 1979. Closing May 15, 1979. Minority cash-out August 30, 1979. Beloit Corporation.
Brian Solomon and Mike Schafer, on the New York Central, for the revenue-per-mile and the dividend that earned the nickname.
Last operating day September 11, 1992. Three Rivers Railway took the lines CSX wanted. The corporate shell continued as Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Properties.
Surface Transportation Board, Finance Docket 36056, notice of August 26, 2016. Three Rivers Railway Company was still a Class III subsidiary of CSX Transportation. Corporate-family merger exemption effective September 11, 2016.
Locobase 51 and Classic Trains, for A-2a 9400–9406, Alco, May–June 1948, retired August 1956, scrapped 1957. Alco’s last steam locomotives for a U.S. railroad. None preserved.
Monongahela Railway, for the December 31, 1900, incorporation, the Baltimore & Ohio third in 1927, and Conrail on May 1, 1993.