One last thing... regarding the Erie Lackawanna having so much of its network be abandoned by Conrail... There were two major factors in that... first, Conrail had taken over all of Erie Lackawanna's competitors too, which caused them to have redundant routes in most places that the Erie Lackawanna went.

The second factor was that the original Erie had been built through far less populated areas than its competitors. While Penn Central had both the New York Central and Pennsylvania routes from NYC to Chicago, Erie (and thus Erie Lackawanna) had a competing route from Hoboken, NJ to Chicago. Along the way the NYC hit Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland. The Pennsy hit Philadphia and Pittsubrgh. The Erie hit Hornel and Meadville. If you had those three routes going to the same place and needed to drop one to save money, the Erie was the obvious one to drop.