Erie Railroad Extra Board Project


About the Erie Railroad Extra Board Project

This project began with two dozen Erie Railroad magazines which were given to me by a railfan friend 20 years ago. In 2000, I rediscovered them in my basement and was struck by the amazing amount of information they contained on the Erie and the people who worked the trains, the yards, and back offices. About that time, I was playing around with HTML coding and decided I needed a project to practice on. With the availability of web space from the Rootsweb genealogical service, a project was born.

Since starting this project, I have had the pleasure of corresponding with a number of people, both former Erie Railroaders and people researching family members who worked for the railroad. Some of these folks have sent along copies of photos, rosters, Erie Magazines and other items in their possession, and as a result this site has continued to grow. Most recently, the Salamanca, NY Railroad Museum has graciously made available copies of documents from their collection which has significantly expanded the scope of Erie Magazine indexing. I greatly appreciate the willingness of all of those contributors to share their Erie mementos.

I have informally dubbed this the "Extra Board," traditionally the ordered list of crews from which work assignments were made. My goal is to eventually compile an Erie crew list spanning the generations, with as much detail as possible. In so doing, I hope to honor the work those crews performed, and to preserve a portion of their identities as expressed through their work lives.


Jim Sponholz
Milwaukee, WI
"Chief Crew Caller"


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