New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad

Ghost Corp Apparel — resurrecting iconic corporate ghosts.

The New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad Company was the formal name behind the Nickel Plate Road: a fast-freight-minded Midwestern railroad with an impossibly grand name and a considerably catchier nickname. Its lineage began in 1881; after receivership, the road was reorganized under the Railroad Company name in 1887.

Its completed 1882 main line linked Buffalo, New York, and Chicago, Illinois, through Cleveland, Ohio, and Fort Wayne, Indiana. The route competed along the Lake Erie corridor, while the “Nickel Plate” moniker reportedly sprang from a newspaper’s description of a double-track, nickel-plated railroad. Modest branding? Not remotely.

Cleveland was its corporate home. Chief offices first occupied the Hoyt Block at Bank Street and St. Clair Avenue; executive and general offices moved into Cleveland Union Terminal’s Tower on January 1, 1928. Under the Van Sweringen interests, the system expanded through the Lake Erie & Western and Toledo, St. Louis & Western, with unified operations beginning in 1923.

The Nickel Plate built a formidable reputation for freight speed and its Berkshire steam locomotives. It also leased the Wheeling & Lake Erie Railroad in 1949, reaching further toward Mid-Atlantic markets and coal country. In 1964, Norfolk & Western absorbed the company in a major consolidation.

Our New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad collection celebrates the sharp lettering, hard-running freight energy, Cleveland command-center swagger, and gloriously overbuilt name of the railroad better remembered as the Nickel Plate Road.