Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad Co. - issued to Gladys Moore Vanderbilt, Countess Széchenyi - 1949 dated Railway Stock Certificate

Stock issued to but not signed by Gladys, Countess Laszlo Szechenyi.

Gladys Moore Vanderbilt, Countess Széchenyi (August 27, 1886 – January 29, 1965) was an American heiress from the prominent American Vanderbilt family, and the wife of a Hungarian count, László Széchenyi. Countess Széchenyi was born Gladys Moore Vanderbilt in 1886, the seventh and youngest child of Alice Claypoole Gwynne and Cornelius Vanderbilt II, the president and chairman of the New York Central Railroad. Gladys grew up in the family home on Fifth Avenue in New York City, and their summer "cottage," The Breakers in Newport, Rhode Island. She attended Miss Chapin's School in New York. Her first cousin was Consuelo Vanderbilt, Duchess of Marlborough, who married Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough. She inherited about $25 million from her father's estate and a further $5 million from her mother's estate. She also inherited The Breakers.

In 1948, as a widow, she leased The Breakers to the Preservation Society of Newport County for $1 a year. She continued to maintain an apartment in The Breakers by agreement until her death. In 1913, there were rumors that Vanderbilt was going to leave her husband due to his financial woes, including gambling away all of her dowry. In 1914, during World War I, she placed her palace in Budapest at the disposal of the army. Shortly thereafter, 600 reservists were quartered there, and the Countess further intended to use the palace as a hospital. Read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladys_Vanderbilt_Sz%C3%A9chenyi

The Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad (P&LE) (reporting mark PLE), also known as the "Little Giant", was formed on May 11, 1875. Company headquarters were located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The line connected Pittsburgh in the east with Youngstown, Ohio at nearby Haselton, Ohio in the west and Connellsville, Pennsylvania to the east. It did not reach Lake Erie (at Ashtabula, Ohio) until the formation of Conrail in 1976. The P&LE was known as the "Little Giant" since the tonnage that it moved was out of proportion to its route mileage. While it operated around one tenth of one percent of the nation's railroad miles, it hauled around one percent of its tonnage. This was largely because the P&LE served the steel mills of the greater Pittsburgh area, which consumed and shipped vast amounts of materials. It was a specialized railroad deriving much of its revenue from coal, coke, iron ore, limestone, and steel. The eventual closure of the steel mills led to the end of the P&LE as an independent line in 1992. At the end of 1970 P&LE operated 211 miles (340 km) of road on 784 miles (1,262 km) of track, not including PC&Y and Y&S; in 1970 it reported 1419 million ton-miles of revenue freight, down from 2437 million in 1944. Read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_and_Lake_Erie_Railroad

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