Since its main lines connected Buffalo with Chicago and St. Louis, the Nickel Plate would seem to be a natural partner to the Lackawanna or Lehigh Valley, which connected Buffalo with New York (or, to be precise, Hoboken/Jersey City). This timetable advertises two through Nickel Plate/Lackawanna trains, the Nickel Plate Limited (which the Lackawanna called the Phoebe Snow) and the Westerner (a name both railroads agreed upon), between Hoboken and Chicago. When the merger movement began, however, the Erie joined with the Lackawanna, and rather than join with the Lehigh Valley, the Nickel Plate was gobbled up by Norfolk and Western.

Click image to download a 8.3-MB PDF of this timetable contributed by Ellery Goode.

In addition to its Chicago-Buffalo trains, the Nickel Plate in 1954 offered a train between St. Louis and Cleveland. Connections with the Chicago-Buffalo trains were poor, however: the train arrived in Cleveland an hour after one Buffalo-bound train left and 13 hours before the other. Similarly, the train left Cleveland for St. Louis 10 hours after one train from Buffalo arrived and four hours before the other. With New York Central providing direct connections, no one would take the Nickel Plate between St. Louis and Buffalo.

Of course, the Nickel Plate and other smaller railroads reached intermediate cities that weren’t served by the Central, Pennsylvania, or other large carriers. But it is clear that these railroads had given up on being true competitors in long-distance travel.