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The Lake Cities was a passenger train operated by the Erie Railroad and its successor—the Erie Lackawanna Railway—between Chicago, and Jersey City, and later, to Hoboken, New Jersey.
Contents
The Lake Cities began in 1939 as the Midlander, a Jersey City-Chicago service with sections to Cleveland, Ohio, and Buffalo, New York. Unlike other New York-Chicago runs, it bypassed Buffalo to the south and ran through the Southern Tier of New York State.
A few years before the Erie's 1960 merger with the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, the Lake Cities began running into the Hoboken Terminal in Hoboken, New Jersey, rather than the Erie's Pavonia Terminal, in Jersey City. Between 1961 and 1962, the train was known as the "Chicago Lake Cities/Buffalo Lake Cities", but reverted to Lake Cities again. Sleeper service ended on October 28, 1962. In connection with the 1964 World's Fair in New York, the Lake Cities was renamed The World's Fair from April 26 until October 25, 1964. Originally routed via Port Jervis en route to Bingamton over the traditional Erie lines, by the latter part of the 1960s it was routed over the Lackwanna's Poconos line after the elimination of the Phoebe Snow line in 1966. On November 28, 1966, the Lake Cities regained diner and sleeper service to compensate for the withdrawal of the Phoebe Snow (which had its final run the previous day), but by 1967 the sleeping service went no further west than Marion, Ohio, while the dining car stopped at Huntington, Indiana.
The Erie Lackawanna withdrew the train on January 6, 1970.
Equipment
After World War II the Erie acquired seven lightweight sleepers from Pullman-Standard, each with ten roomettes and six double bedrooms. The Lake Cities carried one in each direction between New York and Chicago.
Station stops
The following timetable with the New Jersey and Pennsylvania stops reflects a consolidation of service with the Phoebe Snow train which was discontinued in 1968. Prior to that time the Lake Cities ran a route through Sullivan and Orange Counties in New York.