The presenter of our March show is Jeff Erlitz (ERA #3997), editor-in-chief of The Bulletin since February 2018. Jeff’s program will take us on a three-week trip through England, Belgium, Germany and Austria. Do not miss this presentation!
Our monthly meetings will be held via Zoom until we give prior notice of a new hotel location and we are authorized to hold live meetings again. Starting with the June 2020 meeting, Zoom presentations are being recorded and posted here and on our YouTube channel, ERA-TV. Recordings will become available for viewing approximately two weeks after each meeting.
Thank you very much to those of you who have already made generous contributions to support our programs in 2020 and early 2021! The membership’s response to our fund drive has been outstanding! If you have not already done so, please consider a donation this year to help ERA continue its 87-year record of traction education and entertainment. Our new online Donation Form makes it much easier to contribute!
The ERA is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt corporation. Your donations are fully tax deductible and can be made using the new donation form on our website.
Donate
Please take a moment to complete our online 2021 Dues Renewal Form. We look forward to your continued support of the ERA’s long record of traction education and entertainment.
And if you’re not an ERA member yet, complete our 2021 New Member Application Form.
RenewWe have a huge selection of Headlights in both print and PDF editions, plus the amazing Elevated Railways of Manhattan book, all available for immediate purchase online. Plus, our convenient Publication Sales section is cleaner and easier to use than ever before.
Eric R. Oszustowicz (2021)
The Zoom Meeting Calendar is a new monthly feature compiled by ERA member George Chiasson Jr. Zoom presentations are happening at transit clubs all across the country, and now you won’t have to miss a single one. Thank you, George!
Presenter: Eric Oszustowicz
Electric Railroaders Assoc.
Presenter: Erik Miller and Larry Velte
DC NRHS
As many of you may have heard by now, the historic Roosevelt Hotel has closed, another sad casualty of the depressed Covid-19 economy. The Roosevelt has been ERA’s meeting venue since 2014.
We will be looking for new venues for future in-person meetings. In the meantime, meetings will remain virtual on our highly successful Zoom venue until further notice.
With each speaker’s approval, all meetings are recorded and posted here (see below). ERA’s Zoom meetings have had spectacular attendance (148 in September!) and made it possible for our many non-NYC-area members spanning Australia, Japan, North America, the UK, and Germany to participate!
Barring any extraordinary circumstances, the first volume of this long-awaited multi-volume work is targeted for distribution to our paid-up members during the first few months of 2021.
Volume 1 will represent Headlights for 2019 and 2020, though at over 400 pages it is equivalent to five typical annual Headlights issues! There are ultimately plans for three volumes, and each volume will be extensively illustrated with complete histories.
Volume 1 covers the history of the BMT and its predecessors from 1864 to the 1940 takeover by the NYC Board of Transportation. Volume 2 will cover BMT post-1940 to 1969 and will include photographs of every former BMT elevated station in route order. Volume 3 will contain a plethora of high-quality color photographs from the 1950s and 1960s and a detailed roster for all equipment in existence from 1864 to 1969.
We heard from many of you saying that you really enjoy receiving The Bulletin monthly. So we will continue to publish it monthly!
When Ray Berger passed away in 2016, he left a trove of transportation memorabilia he had been collecting for decades. Jeff Erlitz and Noah Caplin have been hard at work sorting through these archives. Jeff has scanned a bunch of the vintage items they found, presented here for our members to enjoy.
The Journal was published by the ERA from 1976 through 1978 during a hiatus in the publication of Headlights. Thanks to the massive efforts of Jeff Erlitz, we have added a complete three-year set of high-res PDFs available for viewing online or download.
Free PDFs of almost every Bulletin since 2002 are available for viewing online or download. In addition, we have added many full issues as far back as 1958! There are also covers from the current year, which we add to each month, and complete PDFs of these issues become available at the end of December.
We have added free PDFs of almost every Headlights index from 1943-1977 for viewing online or download. Thank you John Swindler and Jeff Erlitz for your invaluable scanning work!
