New York, Ontario & Western Railway: Map, Roster, History

Last revised: September 22, 2026

Wall Street called it the Old Woman. The men who ran it, and the people who lived beside it, called it the Old & Weary. Reporting mark NYOW. The New York, Ontario & Western was a mountain railroad that began as someone else’s idea of a trunk line: DeWitt C. Littlejohn’s New York & Oswego Midland, chartered January 11, 1866, to tie Oswego on Lake Ontario to New York by the most direct line he could draw. Direct, on that map, meant straight across the grain of the Catskills. The company that inherited the grade took the property on January 21, 1880. It never climbed out of the anthracite habit. The last freight left Norwich for Middletown on March 29, 1957, and the court sold the railroad for scrap.

General offices were in New York City. The shops, the roundhouse, and the railroad’s real address were Middletown. The New York–Oswego main, counting West Shore trackage rights into Weehawken, ran about 326 miles. With the Scranton Division and the branches, the 1930 system is carried at 568 route-miles. The railroad's slogan long used to market its passenger trains was Route of the Mountaineer.

New York Ontario and Western FT diesels awaiting disposition in the Middletown New York yard in May 1957

Ontario & Western FTs in the Middletown yard, May 1957, a month after the last train. Doug Wornom photo.

On this page: At a glance · Oswego Midland · Cornwall and the West Shore · System map, 1940 · Scranton Division · New Haven control · Milk, coal, and the Mountaineer · March 29, 1957

At a glance

The New York, Ontario & Western logo. Author’s work.

Item	Detail
Headquarters	New York City. Shops and the operating base at Middletown, New York
Predecessor	New York & Oswego Midland, chartered January 11, 1866. Through train Oswego–New York, July 10, 1873. Receivership September 19, 1873
This company	New York, Ontario & Western Railway. Foreclosure sale November 14, 1879. Took the property January 21, 1880
States	New York and Pennsylvania. Weehawken, New Jersey, by West Shore trackage rights
Route-miles	About 326 on the New York–Oswego main, rights included. 568 in the 1930 system count
Gauge	4 ft 8½ in
Principal lines	Weehawken–Cornwall (West Shore rights); Cornwall–Middletown–Sidney–Oswego; Cadosia–Scranton; Summitville–Port Jervis and Monticello; Summitville–Kingston; Randallsville–Utica and the Rome branch
Mark / slogan	NYOW / Route of the Mountaineer
New Haven	Stock control, 1904
Bankruptcy	Interest notice February 25, 1937. Petition May 19, 1937. Never reorganized
Last trains	Steam finished in the summer of 1948. Last passenger train September 10, 1953. Last freight March 29, 1957
Successor	None. Liquidated
Rosters	Steam · All-time diesel

The January 21, 1880 date is the day the new company took the Midland property. The 568-mile figure is the 1930 system count long carried for this railroad. Information compiled September 22, 2026.

DeWitt Littlejohn and the Midland

Littlejohn wanted Oswego, his own town, on a railroad that did not have to ask the Erie’s permission. New York chartered the New York & Oswego Midland on January 11, 1866. The line was to run from Oswego through Norwich, Walton, and Summitville to Middletown, with branches toward Ellenville, Delhi, and, on paper, Buffalo. Construction of the piece north of Middletown got underway in 1868. The road did not follow the rivers. It crossed the ranges. Fills, trestles, and tunnels were the price of a straight line drawn on a map of towns that had voted bonds.

The Bloomingburg Tunnel saw a train on January 24, 1872. The last main-line rails went down near Roscoe on July 9, 1873. The first through train to New York, by way of the New Jersey Midland south of Middletown, ran the next day, July 10. Receivership followed on September 19, 1873, six weeks after the celebration and in the middle of the Panic. Service stopped for a stretch in February 1875. The New Jersey connection was lost with the bankruptcy. What the bondholders still owned was a mountain railroad from Middletown to Oswego, plus the branches to Delhi, New Berlin, and Ellenville, and a hole where the New York terminal had been.

Kenneth G. White sold the Midland at Middletown on November 14, 1879. The New York Tribune of January 3, 1880, reported the new board: Conrad N. Jordan president, Theodore Houston secretary. The new name was the New York, Ontario & Western Railway. The receivers handed over the property on January 21, 1880.

Cornwall, and a 200-year guest ticket

The new company still needed a way to the Hudson that did not depend on the Erie at Middletown. Its owners were in the same circle that was building the New York, West Shore & Buffalo, the parallel to the New York Central. The O&W opened its own line from Middletown to a West Shore connection at Cornwall on June 4, 1883. When the West Shore opened through in 1884, Ontario & Western trains had rights from Cornwall down to Weehawken, opposite Manhattan. The Central leased the West Shore in 1885 and kept the guest. In 1886 the Middletown–Cornwall piece, built as a West Shore branch, was sold to the O&W, and the trackage-rights agreement was rewritten for 200 years, with the use of the Weehawken terminal in the bargain. The O&W paid a fixed sum per mile. It never owned a rail of its own into the terminal.

An A-B set of New York Ontario and Western FT and F3 diesels eastbound at Campbell Hall New York circa 1953

An A-B set of FTs and F3s eastbound at Campbell Hall, New York, circa 1953. Campbell Hall is where the O&W met the Erie and the New Haven’s Maybrook traffic. Marvin Cohen photo. American-Rails.com collection.

Four divisions carried the timetable. The Southern Division was Weehawken and Cornwall to Sidney, 201 miles, including the old Port Jervis, Monticello & Summitville: 22 miles from Summitville down to Port Jervis, and 16 miles from Valley Junction to Monticello. A branch of about 35 miles left the main north of Summitville for Kingston and the Ulster & Delaware. The Northern Division went on from Sidney to Oswego, about 125 miles, with the New Berlin Branch, 29 miles to Edmeston, until that line was sold to the Unadilla Valley in 1940. The Utica Division left the main at Randallsville, 31 miles to Utica, with a 13-mile branch to Rome. The fourth division was the one that paid the bills.

System map, 1940

Official 1940 system map of the New York Ontario and Western Railway

An official 1940 system map of the New York, Ontario & Western. Author’s collection. Weehawken at the bottom, Oswego at the top, Scranton off to the southwest.

Thomas P. Fowler and the Scranton Division

Thomas P. Fowler came from the New York Central and presided over the coal extension. The Scranton Division, 54 miles from Cadosia to Scranton, opened in 1890. At Scranton the O&W met the Jersey Central, the Lackawanna, and the Lehigh Valley. Anthracite was the freight. Clean-burning coal for houses and boilers moved north to the Hudson and, later, east toward the New Haven at Maybrook. Around the turn of the century the Southern Division was double-tracked from East Branch to Cornwall, and the Scranton Division was double-tracked its whole length, with block signals. Centralized traffic control went in on the eight miles from East Branch to Cadosia.

The other paying freight was milk, and the other paying passengers were summer people bound for Catskill hotels. Neither one survived the public highway.

1904, and a railroad used as a chip

In 1904 the New Haven, then under Charles S. Mellen and J. P. Morgan’s orbit, bought control. A stock certificate dated that November covers 287,000 shares of O&W common. Mellen’s use for the property was a bargaining chip with the New York Central, not a railroad to be fed. The chip did not buy what the New Haven wanted. The O&W stayed in the family and went short of maintenance. A. V. Neusser and C. E. Pearce, writing in Trains in August 1942, quoted a Wall Street man who had already given up on the map: the road “really starts nowhere, goes nowhere, avoids all large industrial centers, and ends nowhere.”

The 1930s, and a styled Mountain

Hard roads into the Catskills took the hotel trains. Oil and gas took the house coal. Trucks took the milk. Robert E. Malinoski, writing up the Scranton Division as it stood on March 17, 1933, put the traffic of 1932 at half the peak of three years earlier. On February 25, 1937, the company told holders of the refunding mortgage bonds, due in 1992, that the March 1 interest would not be paid. Two of the three railroad-owned collieries had already defaulted on what they owed the railroad. The bankruptcy petition was filed May 19, 1937. Trustee Frederick E. Lyford cut plant, sold the Norwich, Oneida, and Oswego stations, and in 1940 sold the New Berlin Branch to the Unadilla Valley. The railroad stayed in court for twenty years.

Public timetable of the New York Ontario and Western circa 1940

A public timetable of the New York, Ontario & Western, circa 1940. Author’s collection.

The passenger experiment of 1938 was the Mountaineer Limited, Weehawken to Roscoe, 137 miles. Otto Kuhler restyled two steel parlor-observations and a handful of coaches, and Class Y 4-8-2 405, an Alco-Schenectady engine of 1923, got a light shroud in maroon, orange, and black. The rest of the fleet was not styled. Passenger earnings kept falling. Northern Division passenger trains were already gone, dropped in 1929. Seasonal trains ended in 1948. The last passenger train of any kind ran on September 10, 1953.

The freight experiment was a bridge line. Symbol trains out of Mayfield Yard at Scranton aimed at the New Haven’s Maybrook Yard: eastbound OB-2 and LB-4, westbound BO-1 and BL-1, plus SU-1 and US-2 between Scranton and Norwich or Utica. The Oswego dock was rebuilt, on the order of $300,000, in the hope that Canadian National or Canadian Pacific would ferry cars across Lake Ontario. Neither road took the offer. Anthracite told the same story in tons: still 6 million in 1936, and 307,521 in 1955.

Diesels, and March 29, 1957

Electro-Motive FTs arrived in May 1945, helped by Reconstruction Finance Corporation loans, and F3s and NW2s in 1948 finished the job. Steam was out of service by the summer of 1948. The mechanical story is on the diesel roster. Jim Shaughnessy and Rod Craib, in the July 1957 Trains obituary, described the last physical cuts: most of the double track came out, and the railroad chased any shipper still willing to use a line the court already doubted.

Trustees tried to sell pieces to anyone who would operate them. The talks ran long enough for the creditors to prefer a sale of the assets. On March 29, 1957, the last freight ran from Norwich to Middletown, and the bankruptcy court ordered the New York, Ontario & Western liquidated. It was the largest American railroad liquidation of its day. The Rock Island, in 1980, is the later comparison. The FTs sat at Middletown, and then on the Erie, until most of them became trade-in metal. Much of the grade is a trail.

Sources

Ontario & Western Railway Historical Society. Corporate outline: Midland, the 1880 reorganization, Cornwall, and the West Shore rights of 1884
New York Tribune, January 3 and January 9, 1880, as reprinted in W. W. Munsell’s Delaware County appendix. Foreclosure sale at Middletown; the new board
Semaphore (Long Island–Sunrise Trail Chapter, NRHS), April 2017, and the companion NYO&W talk. Charter January 11, 1866; Bloomingburg January 24, 1872; rails finished July 9, 1873; through train July 10; receivership September 19, 1873; sale November 14, 1879; possession January 21, 1880; Cornwall connection June 4, 1883; New Haven certificate November 1904; petition May 19, 1937
Neusser, A. V., and C. E. Pearce. “The NYO&W.” Trains, August 1942. The Wall Street quotation; the Mountaineer styling of 405
Malinoski, Robert E. “NYO&W Scranton Division: March 17, 1933.” Trains, March 1987. Traffic halved from the 1929 peak
Shaughnessy, Jim, and Rod Craib. “Obituary of an Old Woman.” Trains, July 1957. Double-track removal; last years
Classic Trains, “Remembering the New York, Ontario & Western,” October 29, 2020. Lyford; steam finished in the summer of 1948; Northern Division passengers dropped in 1929

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