The presenter of our November show is ERA member Mark Kavanagh (ERA #6317). Mark will share photos from his many travels to Japan over the past 30 years. He has seen a lot of change over the years and is pleased to share them with ERA members and guests from around the world. All ERA members and friends anywhere in the world are invited to attend this exciting online event!
When Ray Berger passed away in 2016, he left a trove of transportation memorabilia he had been collecting for decades. Jeff Erlitz and Noah Caplan have been hard at work sorting through these archives. Jeff has scanned a bunch of the vintage trip notices they found, presented here for our members to enjoy.
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.
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Our monthly meetings will be held via Zoom until we give prior notice of a return to the Roosevelt Hotel for live meetings. 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.
We heard from many of you saying that you really enjoy receiving The Bulletin monthly. So we will continue to publish it monthly!
As many of you may have heard by now, the historic Roosevelt Hotel, ERA’s meeting venue since 2014, will close on October 31, 2020, another sad casualty of the depressed Covid-19 economy. Your ERA board of directors 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 the speaker’s approval, all meetings are recorded and posted on ERA’s website, www.erausa.org. 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 by the end of 2020. 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.
Thank you very much to those of you who have already made generous contributions to support our programs along with your dues renewals! The membership’s response to date has been outstanding!
As we explained in our 2021 dues renewal letter, even with our streamlining program and dues adjustments, our expenses are projected to exceed revenues by approximately $40,000 per year, making it difficult for ERA to continue beyond the 2023 membership year.
If you have not already done so, please consider a donation this year to help ERA continue its 86-year record of traction education and entertainment. Our new online Donation Form makes it much easier to donate! 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.
DonateWe 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.
“San Francisco’s F-Line” by Peter Ehrlich chronicles streetcar operations from 1860 to 1982, planning for a permanent line, the Trolley Festivals of the 1980s, construction of the F-Line and its opening in 1995, extension to the Wharf and expansion plans, an overview of other historic and modern streetcars in America, and much, much more!
This is the new fourth edition of “San Francisco’s F-Line,” published in October 2019. It incorporates updates and changes since the book’s original publication in October 2012, and the third edition in April 2014.
Our friends at the Central Electric Railfans’ Association (CERA) are making “San Francisco’s F-Line” available for a special one-time, non-member price of only $45 with free shipping. Just use the Order Now button below and enter the promo code “ERA ZOOM” upon checkout.
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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. View Here
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! View Here
