Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad

Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad

Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad (red) and New York Central system (orange) as of 1918
Reporting mark	PLE
Locale	Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Youngstown, Ohio Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Connellsville, Pennsylvania
Dates of operation	1875–1993
Successor	CSX
Track gauge	4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge
Headquarters	Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Youngstown, Ohio

The Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad (P&LE) (reporting mark PLE), also known as the "Little Giant", was formed on May 11, 1875. Company headquarters were located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The line connected Pittsburgh in the east with Youngstown, Ohio at nearby Haselton, Ohio in the west and Connellsville, Pennsylvania to the east. It did not reach Lake Erie (at Ashtabula, Ohio) until the formation of Conrail in 1976. The P&LE was known as the "Little Giant" since the tonnage that it moved was out of proportion to its route mileage. While it operated around one tenth of one percent of the nation's railroad miles, it hauled around one percent of its tonnage. This was largely because the P&LE served the steel mills of the greater Pittsburgh area, which consumed and shipped vast amounts of materials. It was a specialized railroad deriving much of its revenue from coal, coke, iron ore, limestone, and steel. The eventual closure of the steel mills led to the end of the P&LE as an independent line in 1992.

At the end of 1970 P&LE operated 211 miles of road on 784 miles of track, not including PC&Y and Y&S; in 1970 it reported 1419 million ton-miles of revenue freight, down from 2437 million in 1944.

The P&LE purchased many smaller railroads that operated in the areas of its main train line extending the line north to Youngstown and south to Connellsville. This provided a means of transportation from the steel centers of Pittsburgh to the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway area.

The original line ran between Youngstown, Ohio (at Haselton) and 24th Street in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania near the Jones and Laughlin Iron Works, opened in 1879. The P&LE's passenger terminal in Pittsburgh was on the south bank of the Monongahela River, at the foot of the Smithfield Street Bridge.