New York, Susquehanna & Western Railway (Susie-Q): History, Map & Roster

Last revised: August 27, 2026

The New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway (reporting mark NYSW), the Susie-Q, is a Class II regional of more than 400 miles in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. It is two railroads in one map: a Southern Division on the original New Jersey main line out of North Bergen / Little Ferry, and a Northern Division on former Erie Lackawanna branches from Binghamton to Syracuse and Utica. Those halves do not touch. The connecting former Erie Delaware Division, Binghamton to Port Jervis, is the Central New York Railroad (CNYK), which the Susquehanna operates for Norfolk Southern.

The corporate name dates to 1881. The railroad that railfans photograph in yellow and black is the 1980 Delaware Otsego revival under Walter G. Rich: Alcos, then F45s and SD45s on Sea-Land double-stacks, then a quieter online-freight regional after the 1999 Conrail split. James Bonner became president in July 2024. On June 5, 2026 the railroad ran a six-car special from Binghamton to Callicoon behind America 250 SD45-2 #3634—passenger equipment borrowed, not a return of regular excursions.

New York Susquehanna and Western RS1s 244 and 242 in passenger service at Butler New Jersey circa 1958 Meyer Pearlman

Susquehanna RS1s #244 and #242 in passenger service at Butler, New Jersey, circa 1958. Meyer Pearlman photo. American-Rails.com collection.

On this page: At a glance · 1881 and the Midland · Anthracite and the Erie · Independence and dieselization · Cutbacks, 1958–1979 · Delaware Otsego · The railroad now · Locomotives · All-time diesel roster

At a Glance

Item	Detail
Reporting mark	NYSW
Nickname	Susie-Q / Susquehanna
Parent	Delaware Otsego Corporation (Cooperstown, N.Y.); DOCP Acquisition LLC since the Conrail split era (historically 80% Rich family / 10% CSX / 10% NS)
Charter / name	New York, Susquehanna & Western Railroad Company, 1881 (Railway after the 1980 DO reorganization)
Core ancestor	New Jersey Midland Railway and allied 1860s–70s roads west of the Hudson
Erie control	1898–1940 (bankruptcy 1937 ended practical Erie management)
Passenger service ends	June 30, 1966 (last Butler commuter)
Delaware Otsego takeover	September 2, 1980 (purchase about $5 million)
Mileage (2020s)	400+ including CNYK operation of the former Erie Binghamton–Port Jervis line
Divisions	Southern (N.J. / Warwick) and Northern (Binghamton–Syracuse / Utica), linked only via CNYK
President (2024–)	James Bonner (succeeded Nathan Fenno; Fenno had succeeded Walter Rich in 2007)
Class I connections	CSX (North Bergen / Little Ferry area); Norfolk Southern (Binghamton and the CNYK)

From the New Jersey Midland, 1881

The Susquehanna was assembled after the Panic of 1873 wrecked a cluster of small roads in northern New Jersey and toward the Delaware Water Gap. The important ancestor is the New Jersey Midland Railway, itself a combination of earlier projects that reach back to the Hoboken, Ridgefield & Paterson of 1866. In the summer of 1881 those properties—including the Midland Connecting, Paterson Extension, Pennsylvania Midland, Water Gap Railroad, and related Midland companies—were folded into the New York, Susquehanna & Western Railroad Company.

The original idea was modest: a bridge for anthracite. The Delaware, Lackawanna & Western would bring coal to Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania; the NYS&W would haul it east to the Hudson. The main line ran from the waterfront (Jersey City / later Edgewater and the Little Ferry yards) across the New Jersey Highlands toward the Water Gap, with a branch near Beaver Lake north toward Middletown, New York, and an Erie connection.

Wilkes-Barre & Eastern, then the Erie

In 1892 management decided the profit was in owning the coal road, not just the last hundred miles. The railroad bought Hudson waterfront at Edgewater for export docks and chartered the Wilkes-Barre & Eastern Railroad west from Stroudsburg toward Kingston (Wilkes-Barre) and the Wyoming Valley. The WB&E and the Edgewater terminal were in service by the mid-1890s. The new cutoff undercut older anthracite routes and made the Susquehanna a property worth controlling.

J.P. Morgan interests bought control in 1898 and leased the road to the Erie Railroad. From July 1898 until the next bankruptcy the Susquehanna was an Erie satellite: useful as a New Jersey feeder and as one of several Erie paths toward anthracite, not as a fully independent trunk. The WB&E never overcame the fact that the Lackawanna, Central Railroad of New Jersey, Lehigh Valley, and others already sat in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. Kingston terminal property was being sold for lack of traffic as early as 1926.

Federal control in World War I (the United States Railroad Administration, not “Railroad Association”) left many small anthracite roads worn and cash-poor. The Susquehanna was one of them. Depression traffic finished the argument. The company entered bankruptcy on June 1, 1937. Reorganization cut it free of the Erie. Trustee Walter Kidde, then Henry K. Norton after Kidde’s death in 1943, ran an independent road. Erie’s formal control is dated as ending in March 1940.

The WB&E’s last train ran March 25, 1939 (abandonment had been authorized that January). The NYS&W itself pulled back from Stroudsburg to Hainesburg Junction, New Jersey, in February 1941; the rails went to the war effort in 1942. What remained was a New Jersey railroad with a Lehigh & New England connection at Hainesburg and, later, a Lehigh & Hudson River connection at Sparta Junction.

Official 1940 system map of the New York Susquehanna and Western Railroad

Official 1940 system map of the New York, Susquehanna & Western—after the Wilkes-Barre & Eastern, before the last cutback from Stroudsburg.

Independence, Streamliners, and Dieselization

Kidde bought American Car & Foundry motor cars in 1940 for Paterson–New York commuter runs (bus transfer through the Lincoln Tunnel). In 1941 the railroad ordered Alco RS1 road-switchers and S2 yard engines and began retiring steam. Even-numbered diesels got multiple-unit controls; odd-numbered units did not—a Susquehanna habit railfans still use to read a roster.

In June 1945 the company advertised itself as the first U.S. Class I railroad to be fully dieselized. That is the claim the industry remembered, and it is close enough to be useful if the asterisk stays attached: three Russian Decapod 2-10-0s (#2435, #2461, #2492) remained as yard goats until October 1947. After that, steam on the NYS&W was over until Chinese-built SY 2-8-2 #142 arrived for the 1990s excursion program (that engine is now with the NYS&W Technical & Historical Society and the Belvidere & Delaware River; it returned to Bel-Del service in October 2025 after a rebuild).

Postwar years brought Budd RDC cars (the ACF cars were traded after a fire), stainless coaches, and a silver-and-maroon scheme to match them. Edgewater handled Seatrain car-float interchange toward Gulf ports as well as remaining coal; the coal terminal closed in 1948 and anthracite as a business was gone by 1951. The courts declared the reorganization complete in 1953. For a few years the independent Susquehanna looked like a survivor.

New York Susquehanna and Western RS1 236 at Hackensack New Jersey station September 3 1965 Roger Puta

New York, Susquehanna & Western RS1 #236 is working suburban service and is seen here stopped at the Hackensack, New Jersey station on September 3, 1965. Commuter operations were discontinued the following year. Roger Puta photo.

From Sparta West, Then Almost Nothing

The 1958 recession, deferred maintenance, and the 1961 death of the connecting Lehigh & New England took the west end. Track west of Sparta Junction was abandoned in 1962. The Hanford / Unionville branch had already gone. RDCs were sold. What was left of passenger service died on June 30, 1966—one day’s notice, after president Irving Maidman had offered riders $1,000 each to stop coming. Ninety-five years of NYS&W passenger trains ended at Butler.

Freight kept shrinking: 1968 embargo Sparta–Oak Ridge after an unsafe Sparta bridge, 1971 Oak Ridge–Butler. Tropical Storm Doria in 1971 wrecked a useful CNJ connection. Penn Central’s 1970 bankruptcy and the Conrail consolidation of 1976 left a derelict New Jersey remnant under Maidman, a real-estate owner, not a railroad builder. New Jersey asked Delaware Otsego to take the franchise rather than watch it liquidate.

Delaware Otsego, 1980

Walter G. Rich’s Delaware Otsego Corporation had started in 1965–66 on 2.6 miles of ex-New York Central near Oneonta and had already collected the Cooperstown branch, the Richfield Springs branch, the Fonda, Johnstown & Gloversville, and the Stourbridge. On September 2, 1980 DO began operating the NYS&W (about 27 miles of main line plus New Jersey branches to Croxton, Edgewater, Passaic, and Lodi, and Pennsylvania remnants). The purchase, about $5 million, closed the deal. Rich restyled the company a Railway, kept the Susquehanna name out of fondness for the New York, Ontario & Western, and put the yellow-and-black diamond on secondhand Alcos.

The geographic jump came in 1982. Conrail was shedding former Erie Lackawanna branches. DO took Binghamton–Jamesville (Syracuse) and Binghamton–Utica, plus pieces of the former Lehigh & Hudson River between Warwick, New York, and Limecrest, New Jersey. That created the map that still exists:

Southern Division: original NYS&W across northern New Jersey, plus L&HR into Warwick
Northern Division: Binghamton north to Syracuse and Utica
The gap: filled by operating the former Erie main Binghamton–Port Jervis as the Central New York Railroad (NS-owned iron, NYS&W crews and customers)

The 1980s and 1990s made the Susquehanna famous. Sea-Land double-stack trains used the rebuilt railroad as a New York Harbor bypass, with ex-Burlington Northern SD45s, F45s, and Alco Centuries over Gulf Summit and Starrucca Viaduct. Little Ferry became an intermodal machine. When CSX and Norfolk Southern split Conrail in 1999, they took minority stakes in DOCP Acquisition LLC beside Rich (classically 10 / 10 / 80). Direct stack business faded. What remained is online freight: plastics, paper, food, lumber, chemicals, aggregates, bulk transload—more than 60 customers in recent counts; and almost all of it originated or terminated on line rather than overhead bridge traffic.

Susquehanna C430s 3004 and 3006 with SD45 6360 on eastbound Sea-Land NTV-4 at Oakland Pennsylvania February 16 1986 Doug Kroll

C430s #3004 and #3006 with SD45 #6360 on eastbound Sea-Land train NTV-4 at Oakland, Pennsylvania, February 16, 1986. Doug Kroll photo.

After Rich: 2007–2026

Walter Rich died of pancreatic cancer on August 9, 2007. Nathan Fenno, his successor, ended remaining passenger excursions and sold much of the passenger fleet and the leftover Alcos. A 2006 storm tore up the Utica main line; service came back, but the Northern Division has always been a lighter railroad than the stack-train photographs imply. The Lodi and Passaic branches were formally abandoned in 2020 and torn up in 2025.

James Bonner, formerly of the New York & Atlantic, took the presidency in July 2024. Fenno and three other long-time officers were honored on the June 5, 2026 Binghamton–Callicoon special—79 miles of the old Erie Delaware Division, Starrucca, Gulf Summit, the Delaware River, Finger Lakes Rail Experience cars, SD45-2 #3634 in America 250 paint and SD70M-2 #4062. That is a charter, not a tourist railroad. Regular public excursions have not returned. What has returned, every winter, is Operation Toy Train (Rochelle Park–Warwick, and in 2025 also Syracuse–Binghamton and the CNYK toward Port Jervis).

Modern map of the New York Susquehanna and Western Railway Southern and Northern Divisions

Modern NYS&W map: Southern Division in New Jersey, Northern Division in upstate New York, CNYK over the former Erie between them. Author’s work.

How to read the map

Southern Division: North Bergen / Little Ferry / Ridgefield Park west through Hawthorne, Butler, and Sparta Junction, then former L&HR to Warwick. Interchange with CSX on the New Jersey end and with the Middletown & New Jersey. Shops and the remaining New Jersey yard work sit around Little Ferry / Ridgefield Park, not Cooperstown.
Northern Division: Binghamton north. One line toward Syracuse (Jamesville); the other toward Utica. On-line customers, not a through route to Canada.
CNYK: Binghamton–Port Jervis on NS’s former Erie. Four through trains a week were typical in recent years (two each way), plus detours when CSX’s River Line is blocked. The Stourbridge Railroad still depends on NYS&W at Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania.

Cooperstown is Delaware Otsego’s home. The trains live at Little Ferry and on the Northern Division.

Locomotives

The history page keeps two short lists: what is on the property now, and the diesel eras that got it here. The unit-by-unit all-time diesel roster—RS1s through SD70M-2s, with heritage and dispositions—is a companion article, the same split American-Rails uses for large fallen-flag fleets such as the New York Central diesel roster.

All-time diesel roster: NYS&W diesel locomotives, 1941–2026.

Even-numbered road diesels were MU-equipped; odd numbers were not. That Alco-era habit survived into later secondhand EMD and GE units.

Current power (2025–26)

Confirm a given unit before you treat it as assigned. SD60s in the 3800 series were on the roster in the 2010s; some later wore Western New York & Pennsylvania marks.

Builder	Model	Road numbers (typical)	Notes
EMD	SD70M-2	4060, 4062, 4064, 4066	Ex-Norfolk Southern; current heavy road power. #4062 on the June 5, 2026 special
EMD	SD45-2	3618, 3634	Ex-BN. #3634 reactivated in the 2020s; America 250 paint; Southern and Northern Division assignments 2024–26
EMD	SD40T-2 / SD32ECO	3010, 3012, 3014, 3016	Ex-SP / D&RGW tunnel-motor family; 3012/3016 reported as SD32ECO rebuilds
EMD	SD40-2	3018, 3022, 3024	Secondhand six-motors still on the property in recent lists
EMD	GP40	3040, 3042	Ex-A&WP / N&W; four-axle locals

Some SD60s (3800-series) appeared on NYS&W lists in the early 2020s; Western New York & Pennsylvania was photographing 3802 and 3810 with WNYP marks by June 2025. Do not copy an old unit number from a forum post onto this table without a current sighting. The GP20s, B23-7, and leased SD70Ms on the previous American-Rails roster are not the 2026 railroad.

Sources

New Jersey Midland Railroad Historical Society, company history (Midland / WB&E / dieselization / west-end abandonments)
Wikipedia and Timeline of the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway (dates for 1937 bankruptcy, 1939 WB&E last train, 1966 last passenger, 1980 DO, 2007 Rich, 2024 Bonner)
Trains News Wire, Bill Stephens, June 6, 2026 (Binghamton–Callicoon special; Fenno / Bonner; #3634 and #4062)
Railroad Picture Archives and RailGallery unit lists (2025–26 model mix; treat individual numbers as snapshots)
Garbely Publishing / forthcoming NYS&W east-to-west series (Hoffman, Berkemeyer, Garbely)—best photographic deep dive for the Maidman and early DO years

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