Peoria & Eastern

Company History: P&E was established in 1890 with the combination of several smaller lines to create a route between Indianapolis, Indiana and and Pekin, just down river from Peoria, Illinois. Big Four (the Cleveland Cincinnati Chicago & St. Louis, which itself was controlled by New York Central) later purchased control of P&E. Although NYC first leased then merged Big Four, the P&E retained a separate identity to a large extent. Steam locomotives received NEW YORK CENTRAL SYSTEM lettering on the tenders but were sub-lettered for P&E. Freight cars had the NYC System oval logo but Peoria & Eastern lettering with P&E reporting marks. This pattern carried on into the diesel era. P&E maintained their semi-separate identity through the Penn Central merger of 1968. The collapse of Penn Central also brought down the P&E which was rolled into Conrail in 1976.

Successor/Parent History: The Consolidated Rail Corporation, commonly known as Conrail (reporting mark CR), was the primary Class I railroad in the Northeast U.S. between 1976 and 1999. Conrail is a portmanteau of "consolidated" and "rail" from the name of the company.

The U.S. federal government created Conrail to take over the potentially profitable lines of multiple bankrupt carriers, including the Penn Central Transportation Company and Erie Lackawanna Railway. With the benefit of industry-wide regulatory requirements being reduced (via the 4R Act and the Staggers Act), Conrail began to turn a profit in the 1980s and was turned over to private investors in 1987. The two remaining Class I railroads in the East, CSX Transportation and the Norfolk Southern Railway (NS), agreed in 1997 to split the system approximately equally, returning rail freight competition to the Northeast by essentially undoing the 1968 merger of the Pennsylvania Railroad and New York Central Railroad that created Penn Central. Following Surface Transportation Board approval, CSX and NS took control in August 1998, and on June 1, 1999, began operating their portions of Conrail.

Brief History: The U.S. is a country of 50 states covering a vast swath of North America, with Alaska in the northwest and Hawaii extending the nation’s presence into the Pacific Ocean. Major Atlantic Coast cities are New York, a global finance and culture center, and capital Washington, DC. Midwestern metropolis Chicago is known for influential architecture and on the west coast, Los Angeles' Hollywood is famed for filmmaking.