The Ontario and Western Railway Northern Division

By John Taibi

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: May 7, 2003
• ISBN: 9781439628652

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INTRODUCTION

Following the Civil War, an especially severe outbreak of railroad fever developed in the central New York State communities lying between the New York Central Railroad, located in the Mohawk Valley, and the Erie Railway, which traversed the state’s southern tier. These communities wished to enhance their prosperity by building rail lines that would connect to the earlier trunk-line railroads. While many small lines would connect a number of communities with either the New York Central or the Erie, one grand scheme that blossomed in the spring of 1866 would eclipse all other proposed railroads in the region.

The New York & Oswego Midland Railroad was designed to run diagonally across New York State from Oswego to a point on the Hudson River near New York City’s great harbor. Because of its proposed route, the line was touted as an airline railroad—that is, one that would have the shortest distance between its two endpoints. The chief proponent of this grand scheme was Dewitt C. Littlejohn, who wished to connect his beloved Oswego, a port on Lake Ontario, with the great transportation crossroads centered in and near the New York harbor.

The Midland, as it came to be known, was born of necessity to improve, develop, and open up the interior reaches of New York State. Despite these well-intentioned plans to bring prosperity to central New York, the Midland’s route was ill conceived and, because of its abuse of town bonding laws, was not to be a financially solvent line. By the early 1870s, the line had sunk into the depths of receivership.

Much hope remained for a line with so much promise because of the tremendous Great Lake commerce arriving at Oswego, the closest port to the New York harbor; its route along the north shore of Oneida Lake, where tourist communities could certainly be developed; a connection with the Albany & Susquehanna Railroad (a Delaware & Hudson Canal Company property) at Sidney Plains, where coal could be interchanged with the cross-state railroad; and the beauty of the line skirting the southern Catskill Mountain range, which would certainly attract excursionists—the railroad providing their transportation. The Midland was indeed a railroad with much promise, but its potential was never achieved during its original incarnation. That was reserved for the party of purchasers who ended the Midland’s receivership by acquiring the line in November 1879. The new name for the old Midland became the New York, Ontario & Western Railway. Speculation and hopes both ran high for the future of the O & W

The O & W met with a degree of success during its operation of the old Midland. It was able to make its on-line communities prosper and, in turn, the mostly small villages provided a modicum of business to help support the railroad. Unfortunately, the route of the O & W did not include any large industry that could financially offset the mom-and-pop businesses that were the mainstay of the road’s car loadings. The opening of a branch line that tapped the Lackawanna Valley (Pennsylvania) coal fields in 1890 finally turned the O & W into a financially stable line. Adding to its financial stability was a thriving passenger line to the Catskills’ recreational resorts, a similar seasonal trade with an Oneida Lake terminus at Sylvan Beach, and an ever-increasing network of milk collection points and milk trains that thrust the O & W into the role of top milk supplier to Gotham.

While the New York, Ontario & Western was quite successful in building the railroad into an important forwarder of traffic between the lake and the harbor, its success was short lived. By the 1920s, the effects of encroaching automobile, bus, and truck traffic made deep inroads into the line’s profitability, and by the following decade, the line fell into receivership, eventually becoming the first Class One railroad to be abandoned, on March 29, 1957.

The passing of the O & W, and the Midland before it, left an indelible mark on the communities the railroad once served. Because it was never able to compete with the mighty New York Central Railroad—a position the Midland had thought attainable—it was forever a second-rate railroad, an underdog. However, because many Americans seem to favor an underdog, the railroad largely had, and still has, the approval of those living along its line.

Charm was something the New York, Ontario & Western Railway had in abundance, especially in central New York. On the O & W’s Northern Division situated between Oswego (the northern boundary) and Sidney (the southern)—the heart of central New York and the geographic emphasis of this book—small wood-frame depots connected the railroad and the communities it serviced, largely by short freight