The Lake Cities was a passenger train operated by the Erie Railroad and its successor—the Erie Lackawanna Railway—between Chicago, and Jersey City, and later, to Hoboken, New Jersey. The Lake Cities began in 1939 as the Midlander, a Jersey City-Chicago service with sections to Cleveland, Ohio, and Buffalo, New York. Unlike other New York-Chicago runs, it bypassed Buffalo to the south and ran through the Southern Tier of New York State. The Erie Lackawanna withdrew the train on January 6, 1970.