page_title: Cambridge Springs station
section_title: Erie Railroad
hierarchical_section_title: Cambridge Springs station / Decline in service / Erie Railroad
caption_attribution_description: English: Cambridge Springs Volunteer Fire Department in Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania, which served as the depot from 1957-1965.
context_page_description: Cambridge Springs was a railroad station for the Erie Railroad in Cambridge Springs, Crawford County, Pennsylvania, United States. Cambridge Springs station was on the Main Line's Meadville Division, which was the section of the line between Salamanca, New York and Meadville, Pennsylvania. The station was located 501.2 miles from Manhattan and the Barclay Street Ferry, which connected to Pavonia Terminal in Jersey City, New Jersey and 480.8 miles from Hoboken Terminal in Hoboken, New Jersey. For nearly three decades, the station had connections to the Northwestern Pennsylvania Railway, which was a trolley line that connected the city of Erie and Meadville. Modern Erie Railroad station signage denoted the station as "Home of Alliance College," a local private university that closed in 1987.
  Service to Cambridge Springs began in October 1862, with completion of the Atlantic and Great Western Railway to Meadville, a 6 ft railway that originally went from Salamanca to Corry, Pennsylvania until work was suspended in 1861 due to financial issues.
context_section_description: In October 1924, the Erie Railroad documented the location of the Cambridge Springs depot as the halfway point of the line between New York and Chicago. Located historically at 501.2 miles (806.6 km) from New York, a monument was made to recognize the spot, with a celebration in October. Over 175 railroad station agents and their spouses attended the ceremony which unveiled a marble monument stating the halfway point. The event was held at the Bartlett and Riverside hotels in Cambridge Springs, during a convention of the Erie Railroad. The 132-year old Riverside Inn was demolished in a fire that ravaged the building on May 2, 2017.
  By August 1911, the Erie Railroad operated ten trains through Cambridge Springs, nine that would accept passengers and one that would only discharge passengers who boarded from Hornell. By 1916, the Erie had cut this down to six daily (three in each direction). After those cuts, the schedule of trains through Cambridge Springs became steady for over a decade, as by 1927, the schedule of services had not changed, with westbound trains to Meadville, Cleveland and Chicago and eastbound trains to New York City via Jersey City, New Jersey. With the debut of the Erie Limited on June 2, 1929, the service at Cambridge Springs was further curtailed, with two daily regular passenger stops in each direction, a train that ran six days a week in each direction to Meadville, and a request stop in each direction on the Chicago Express. The Erie Limited did not stop at Cambridge Springs. By September 1931, a mixed train (freight and passenger), Nos. 37 and 38, had been added between Jamestown, New York and Meadville, serving as an extra train through Cambridge Springs. When timetables came out in June 1933, another mixed train was added in each direction, However, by November, all the mixed trains had been deleted from the schedule
  During the presidency of Frederick Douglas Underwood, the Erie Railroad had accrued some serious debt, and although the railroad survived well under Underwood, the railroad was in need of modernization, which other railroads had begun to do. Although the Erie's financial problems were serious, they were not unsolvable, as Henry Sturgis, a banker from New York City suggested to Underwood. The proposed solution was to work on the Erie's bonds, but that ended up not being a solution that was done, and the Erie's financial troubles continued. After Underwood's retirement, the following presidents were unable to help the Erie, due to various government regulations and in 1929, the stock market crash and the Great Depression killed any hopes for financial stability, as it killed a lot of the railroad's business in the freight industry. From 1929–1932, the passenger business fell 50%, but this stabilized in later years, with only a 2% drop from 1933–1936. In 1937, President Charles Denney and the railroad filed for its fourth bankruptcy, which ended up being a partial benefit to keeping the railroad afloat for passenger service. During this time, the Erie also took a massive hit in railroad territory, causing "tremendous" losses during the latter half of 1937. Despite the filing for bankruptcy with the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Erie became the first railroad of many to return to making a profit and exit bankruptcy. In 1941, an agreement was made in federal courts to reorganize the Erie, which also took control of the Cleveland and Mahoning Valley Railway, a rail line it had been leasing since the 1880s. The New York, Susquehanna and Western Railroad and New Jersey and New York Railroad were both released from control of the Erie, but critics felt the changes did not reduce the Erie's serious debt by that point.
  By September 1939, the Erie Railroad through Cambridge Springs had become stable once again, with numerous trains in each direction stopping at Cambridge Springs, including the Erie Limited, Atlantic Express and sister Pacific Express, the brand-new Midlander and the Lake Cities, all of which served as through trains between New York and Cleveland or Chicago. This would r
caption: The Cambridge Springs Volunteer Fire Department in July 2015, the structure that replaced the depot
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