Locomotives have generally been on the rise for the past few decades, and have generally been profitable. Erie also had a strong union presence in terms of loco

Locomotives have generally been on the rise for the past few decades, and have generally been profitable. Erie also had a strong union presence in terms of locomotive production, particularly with the UE. What happened in Erie was protesters in one shop would walk over to the nearby building to protest and stop more work, so they had to move facilities away from each other to reduce the union impact. Engine production was moved to Grove city, and (now wabtec) built their new, larger facility in Forth Worth, where many of the suppliers moved. Not only is US freight traffic up, but freight traffic around the world went up as nations industrialized and raw material demands went up in places like Australia. Erie should have had its second coming, but instead everyone has seen what the UE did to the industry and workers don't want to work in union shops, and so the cities population has almost halved since its peak. I'm not as familiar with Cleveland so I can't really speak on it.