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The New York, Ontario and Western Railway was the first class-one railroad in the United States to be abandoned in its entirety. Whereas other rail lines were closed gradually, the federal government closed down the railroad on March 29, 1957, for its failure to pay employee withholding taxes. The railroad went into bankruptcy in 1937 after its main shipping commodity, coal, was rapidly replaced by oil for home heat. As time passed, the interest in this abandoned railroad grew, and much of the company's records have been recovered and preserved. Today, with 750 members, the Ontario and Western Railway Historical Society Archives Center houses this unique corporate record collection. In addition, there are extensive private collections of everything from locomotives, passenger cars, lanterns, and tools to company passes and railroad police memorabilia.
The New York, Ontario and Western Railway was the first class-one railroad in the United States to be abandoned in its entirety. Whereas other rail lines were closed gradually, the federal government closed down the railroad on March 29, 1957, for its failure to pay employee withholding taxes. The railroad went into bankruptcy in 1937 after its main shipping commodity, coal, was rapidly replaced by oil for home heat. As time passed, the interest in this abandoned railroad grew, and much of the company's records have been recovered and preserved. Today, with 750 members, the Ontario and Western Railway Historical Society Archives Center houses this unique corporate record collection. In addition, there are extensive private collections of everything from locomotives, passenger cars, lanterns, and tools to company passes and railroad police memorabilia.
The Ontario & Western?the O&W, or, as both boosters and detractors referred to it in its later years, the ?Old & Weary, ? operated from 1869-1957 and ran from Oswego on Lake Ontario to New York City, passing through the midlands and southern counties of New York State, with spurs to Utica, Kingston, Port Jervis, and Scranton, PA. Filled with colorful characters and miscellaneous machinery, O. & W. chronicles almost a century of alternating hope and heartache, prosperity and poverty, dignity and degradation. Her passing was mourned for a variety of economic and sentimental reasons, but the loss was deeply felt in an intangible way. The rambling, elderly, inefficient, accident-prone, irritating old railroad was a part of a way of life now gone from the American scene.
From 1880 through the 1950s, the New York, Ontario & Western Railway hauled coal from the rich anthracite deposits of eastern Pennsylvania to homes throughout the eastern United States and Canada. In Hard Coal and Coal Cars, Martin Robert Karig chronicles the rise and fall of the O & W's coal hauling operation in a richly illustrated work that interweaves economic, industrial, and technological history. Karig opens his history with the intense competition for the rights to eastern Pennsylvania's lucrative coal-hauling business. He then details the technological developments that transformed coal cars from wooden carts carrying just a few hundred pounds to steel hoppers hauling several tons. Bringing the story into the twentieth century, Karig explains how the O & W's ownership ultimately abandoned the coal-hauling business in the 1950s as coal was supplanted by more reliable and convenient home heating fuels. Rich with the romance of the railroad and crucial to any understanding of Pennsylvania history, Hard Coal and Coal Cars will be the definitive book on a fascinating chapter of American life.
A comprehensive look at the history of the New York, Ontario & Western Railway's Utica Division and Rome Branch in central New York and the villages that were fortunate to have this very personable railroad running through them. This book perpetuates the love, agony, despair, glory, and memory of the O&W's operation along Oriskany Creek.
New York's Capital District was ideally situated to become one of the nation's earliest and most important transportation crossroads. The Mohawk River was the only water level gap in the Appalachian range to the west, which led to the construction of the Erie Canal. Soon after its completion, the state's first railroad began operating between Albany and Schenectady in 1831. Other pioneer railroads followed, heading north to Canada, south to New York City, west to Chicago, and east to Boston. Over the next century, railroads like the New York Central, Boston & Albany, Boston & Maine, and Delaware & Hudson built extensive passenger stations, freight and classification yards, and repair shops in the tri-city region. Passenger operations continue today at the Schenectady and Albany-Rensselaer Amtrak stations, while the Selkirk Yard is still an important classification point for CSX Transportation.
The Middletown and Unionville Railroad, successor to the Middletown, Unionville and Water Gap Railroad, operated from December 1, 1913, until May 31, 1946, when it was reorganized as the Middletown and New Jersey Railway. The railroads main revenue was derived from the transportation of dairy products, feed, coal, lumber, and passengers along its 14.5-mile right-of-way from the city of Middletown through Slate Hill, Johnson, Westtown, and Unionville in Orange County, New York. It provided a connection between the Erie Railroad in Middletown; the New York, Ontario & Western Railway in Middletown; and the New York, Susquehanna & Western Railroad in New Jersey. All three of these railroads had unique relationships with the M&U during its period of operation.
The New York & Oswego Midland Railroad-reorganized in 1879 as the New York, Ontario & Western Railway-was born out of necessity and a desire to populate and industrialize the interior regions of New York State. The railroad meandered down from Oswego, traversed the north shore of Oneida Lake, and then took a southerly route through Oneida and Norwich before turning east for a mountainous crossing to gain the village of Sidney. The railroad was not a success in its time. The New York, Ontario & Western brought a degree of financial stability to the northern division, and the line functioned through the late 1950s. The Ontario & Western Railway Northern Division features photographs of the Ontario & Western, a railroad long on scenery but short on freight. The Ontario & Western inherited a railroad in search of revenue and a circuitous route that passed through one small community after another. Small wooden country depots dotted the line, locomotives of meager proportions pulled the trains, and dedicated employees did their best to keep the railroad solvent. The railroad is still fondly remembered today by those who rode its cars and witnessed its passing trains.