A sad anniversary today…on March 29, 1957 the New York, Ontario and Western Railway was abandoned. They ran something over 500 miles of track from Weehawken, NJ to Oswego, NY with branches. Trackage rights from Weehawken to Cornwall on NYC’s West Shore, which today is the CSX River Line marked the start of their own track. Initially, the Lackawanna took over some of the former Scranton line near Dickson City, Pa, which was operated into the 70’s; the NYC took over about 12 miles of track from Nelson’s to Oswego, which is still operated by CSX today, although on life support. Erie also took a short segment of main line at Middletown, NY to access their Pine Bush branch. Everything else was removed.
I’ve fanned the road a bit around Cadosia, which was where the double track ended and the branch to Scranton began - there is still evidence of the Old & Weary if you know where to look, even the remains of the Hawk Mountain Tunnel. The Cadosia station still stands, but NYS 17 is built on part of the former roadbed. I recall seeing signs of the Old Woman around Rome, as well. The roundhouse may still stand there, albeit in another use. The joint O&W/NYC station in Central Square is now a museum. Railroad, of course…
I seem to recall someone once saying the the O&W went from nowhere to nowhere. Considering how it touched hardly any major population centers, it may be amazing that it lasted as long as it did…
I first heard of the O&W in GMR 2006 and I thought it was a neat road. May we all remember the O&W on this day.
Anyone remember the story about the NYO&W’s "Flying F Unit "? It was chronicaled in one of the railroad magazines some years ago.
Sam
The SUSQUEHANNA is running a switcher in the NYO&W paint. durning the summer it moves cars at the freto lay plant on RT 11 in Binghamton NY i a pic of it taken last year
Neat idea the CGW SD70. I never saw the CGW myself (I’m not quite THAT old) but I have a soft spot in my heart for her. The CGW passenger paint scheme was kinda cool on the F units, but the frieght scheme was kinda bleh.
Again, they never owned a steel passenger car (unless it was one of their office cars) but operated vestibuled wood coaches up to the end. In the summer, with traffic to and from the Catskill Mountain resorts from New York City, they would occasionally borrow some steel New York Central coaches from the West Shore line’s commuter pool on weekends. They had some beautiful 4-8-2’s, but most of their steam was old and small and double-heading on not particulalry long freights was common. They dieselized early, I think around '48 or '49.
Could some fans fill me in-I’m well aware fo the O&W but not that much of it’s history. What was the purpose behind the original construction? To develope the port of Oswego? To haul coal? Agricultural products? Since it only managed to reach NYC via trackage rights, was that even part of the original plan? Could anyone provide an “instant guide” for those of us aware but unfamiliar?
there is also a pic of the switcher on the main page of the web site in the binghamton yard .
NYO&W was indeed a nowhere-to-nowhere route, with not too much of a middle, either. It has been opined that the road lasted until the 1930’s on the strength of its anthracite traffic. When that business dried up, the slow and inevitable decline began.
The O&W was intended to open Oswego as a port on the order of Buffalo; that didn’t happen. In the 1890’s they reached into the coal fields with a branch to Scranton. The Scranton line and much of the road’s eastern end were double tracked to handle the flood of anthracite.
Hard coal became the reason to be, and O&W owned two tugs and a fleet of barges and scows to haul the coal from dumpers at Cornwall and Weehawken to a number of eastern ports, such as Boston. The coal was also sent to dealers all over by rail. After coal started dropping off, the O&W went into bridge traffic, mostly from LV and DL&W to the huge interchange yard at Maybrook for New England delivery.
Some one here wrote the O&W had no steel coaches. Not true. They had two classes of steel cars bought new, but with O&W’s highly seasonal traffic to the Catskills, they discovered it was cheaper to rent steel cars from NYC or CNJ for peak traffic periods. The O&W’s steel cars were sold in the 40’s, mostly to Atlantic Coast Line.
O&W had several classes of 2-8-0’s; two classes of 4-8-2’s and numerous 4-6-0’s and a group of huge 2-10-2’s. The road went diesel with five GE 44 tonners; several dozen NW-2’s; a group of FT A and B sets; several F-3’s and some sets of F-3 AB sets. A couple of NW-2’s are still around…their 116 is the engine repainted in O&W colors, and a few 44 tonners are still lurking about.
Yeah. I’m sure if CGW were still around it would’ve bought SD70s and not 70MACs. They still might even be running the F units[:D].
The O&W is one of my favorite unseen railroads, every since I first learned of them back in the early sixties in an article in either Field and Stream or Sports Afield magazine, about a guy hunting from the abandoned right-of-way. I was taken with the concept of a railroad that large being abandoned, at that time the only abandonment I was aware of was a couple of branch lines in my general area. It must have been a sad little pike at the end.