The ERA is pleased to announce a tour of Staten Island Railway’s new Clifton Maintenance Shop, our first trip to an MTA railcar maintenance facility since we visited the LIRR’s Hillside Maintenance Complex in May 2019. SIR’s $165 million facility opened on December 7, 2022, replacing the previous shop which suffered severe damage during Hurricane Sandy. Read More
Active ERA members for 2023 are invited to attend the first of two in-person meetings this year at Manducatis Restaurant, located at 13-27 Jackson Avenue in Long Island City, Queens (directions here). This meeting will include a cash bar at 6:30 p.m., complimentary dinner at 7 p.m., and a slide presentation afterward by longtime member and acclaimed traction photographer Noah Caplin. Noah’s presentation will include aerial images of subway and railroad locations in the New York City region. See you on July 28! Read More
For its 2023 Annual Convention, the ERA returns to the dynamic Pacific Northwest, anchored by our two primary destinations: Portland and Seattle. These two spectacular cities are, respectively, the nation’s 22nd and 15th most populous metro regions.
The combination of a 60-mile light rail network, local streetcar, commuter rail system, and high-frequency grid bus system have earned Portland the title of one of the best transit networks in the U.S. Seattle is the metro area most committed to developing urban transit, with $54 billion earmarked for transit in 2016, more than any other U.S. city. Read More
The MNYBA welcomes fellow ERA members to our first trip of the year, on a comfortable Coach Tours bus to visit the following places of interest:
Please join us on a wonderful outing to Upstate New York!
Our June Zoom program, Ralph Cantos’ 1966 Eastern Traction Odyssey, takes us on a most memorable eastern traction adventure as it existed over 56 years ago. For three weeks, armed with a vintage 16mm movie camera and lots of film, Cantos rode and filmed rail transit in and around Chicago, Toronto, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Newark, and Boston. His historic 16mm film was edited and transferred to video by Harvey Laner and will be narrated by both men. This show will not be recorded, so don’t miss it! Read More
Our May program, Interurban Railways of Canada, will be presented by Ray DeGroote (ERA #1009). Ray will show a collection of rarely seen views, many in color, of favorites such as the London & Port Stanley and the Montreal & Southern Counties Railway. What little remains of these magnificent Canadian systems reside in transit museums, which we will also visit.
Ray brings long years and extensive knowledge of passenger and freight transportation to tonight’s show. Don’t miss it! Read More
MBS invites our fellow ERA members to join us in celebrating our 75th anniversary with the Spring 2023 Motor Bus Society Convention to be held in the New York and New Jersey metropolitan area. Please note that this is a four-day Thursday to Sunday convention, different from previous conventions which started on a Friday.
The host hotel for the convention will be the Courtyard Secaucus Meadowlands. Highlights of the convention will include visits to the NYCTA Transit Museum, the Branford Trolley Museum, the FNJTHC Lakewood Facility, and the Westchester Bee Line/Liberty Lines Maintenance Facility in Yonkers. There will be activities for everyone!
Clark Frazier, our originally scheduled speaker, is unable to present his planned program for this month. Instead, we are pleased to feature retired MARTA chief operating officer, ERA member, and Ohio native Rich Krisak, who has graciously accepted our invitation on short notice to present Cleveland Transit 1955-1975: Mobility Redefined. This is a continuation of his presentation on Cleveland that he showed at the August 2021 ERA meeting.
Rich’s presentation covers the transit highlights of this tumultuous 20-year period. Declining ridership, increased labor costs and rising fares put the transit system into a “death spiral” that would eventually result in the creation of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority in 1975. It is rare to find a treatment of a major American city’s traction history as comprehensive as the one Rich will present. You will not want to miss this program! Read More
Our April program will be presented by Clark Frazier. Clark will be showing some of his most favorite slides, starting in 1956, of electric streetcars and interurbans. Locations all over the U.S., Canada and Mexico will be seen as well as Costa Rica and, in Europe, the Czech Republic, Portugal and Yugoslavia.
A native of central California, Clark graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a master of science degree in transportation but spent most of his career in the field of information technology. He started taking color slides in 1956 and continued to do so until 2000. He has traveled extensively in Central and South America as well as Europe and Asia. Read More
Our March program, European Tour 2022, will be presented by ERA board member and Bulletin Editor-in-Chief Jeff Erlitz (ERA #3997). Cities visited will include Milan, Vienna and Berlin. While in Milan, Jeff also sampled marine transport on Lakes Maggiore and Como. A special highlight of Jeff’s visit to Berlin was attending the biennial trade show known as InnoTrans. Read More
Our February program will be presented by Eric Oszustowicz, who has been requested to show photographs of the tram systems in Ukraine in addition to views of its metros and mainline railroads. Eric and his wife Mary traveled extensively throughout Ukraine in 2017 and 2018.
Eric’s program will start in the capital, Kyiv, home to an extensive tram, metro and trolleybus system, all of which will be covered. Then it is on to Lviv, Odessa, Kharkiv, and lots more.
Eric’s presentations usually run well over three hours. Please join us for a special evening. Read More
Longtime conventions and trip chairman and former editor of Headlights Jack May will be the presenter of our January meeting. With the pandemic winding down, Jack gradually returned to foreign travel during 2022, and will present a program devoted to his two journeys to Europe this past year, one to France and the other to Belgium.
Jack traditionally opens each year of ERA meetings with his outstanding presentations. Please join us on Zoom to welcome in the New Year with our first program of 2023! Read More
