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Essex Steam train cab ride photos added in Large Scale Modeling?

So, you have limited space in which to build a layout? Don't let that stop you, less can be more. Over the last seven years I have been building a compact double-decked layout based on the New York, Ontario & Western Railway in upstate New York. The New York, Ontario & Western was a regional class one railroad that ran in upstate New York and north eastern Pennsylvania. Over the years, the road has attracted a following completely out of proportion to its size.

I was drawn to the O&W as a child, riding in the back of my parent’s car on route 17. A historical marker placed at the rest area just south of Roscoe, NY was titled "To The Mountains by Rail" and gave a short history of the line. It ended by saying that the road we were traveling on was built on the old railroad right of way, a comment that sparked the imagination of a train loving kid. Little did I know at the time that all these years later I would be so involved with a little railroad that seemingly ran from nowhere to nowhere. 

A Brief (?!) Prototype History....

In the Spring of 1957 Ike was in the White House, the economy was strong, and the future for America was bright. Wham-O had just released the Frisbee, a light plastic flying disk modeled on the metal pie-plates used by Connecticut's Frisbee Pie Company, and Young Love from Tab Hunter and Sonny James was at the top of the music charts. But in upstate New York events were occurring that would go un-noticed by most, yet they would be a pre-cursor of things to come.

On the overcast evening of March 29 New York Ontario & Western #805; an FT type diesel locomotive built by General Motors ten years earlier, pulled its short train into Middletown, New York. When it shut down it brought to a close the last chapter in the history of a once proud regional railroad. Within months the rails and bridges over which it had traveled had been pulled up and sold for scrap. Some of the lines locomotives found new owners, but many lay in storage for years in northern New Jersey, quietly waiting for a buyer that would never come while slowly rusting away where they sat. The State of New York would take possession of much of the right of way claiming reparations for unpaid taxes, and within a short time would start construction of New York’s Route 17 "Quickway", a new four lane highway linking New York City with the Catskills and up-state, using much of the old NYO&W road bed as a base.

The NYO&W was one of the first major "Class one" railroads to be abandoned. It would not be the last. Years later other proud railroads such as the Milwaukee Road and the Rock Island would follow. Some later day rail historians would claim the O&W was a railroad that should never have been built, that it went from nowhere to no place in particular, and that it took a nearly impossible route built at a 90 degree angle to the mountains to get there. These claims do little justice to the O&W’s early history.

The railroad was almost single-handedly responsible for opening up the Catskill mountain region to New York’s populous, running a seemingly endless of extra passenger trains during the summer just to handle the traffic. Near the turn of the century the O&W was the second largest shipper of milk into the City of New York, and thus the second largest milk hauler in the country. Trainload after trainload of anthracite coal was dug out of the mountains near Scranton Pennsylvania and hauled over the line to shipping points at either Oswego, NY or Weehawken, NJ. Part of the charm of the steam era O&W was its widespread use of camelback steam locomotives and wooden passenger cars - the so-called "Great Timber Fleet" (a disparaging comparison to the New York Central's "Great Steel Fleet"). The road attracted many nicknames, "The Old & Weary", and "The Old Woman" among them.

Just prior to WWII the fortunes of the railroad changed. The market for anthracite coal softened, the milk business went increasingly to trucks, and the rise in ownership of personal automobiles meant that fewer and fewer passengers were using the railroad to travel to their vacation. The railroad went into receivership. It made one last gallant effort in 1937 to attract more riders by re-styling its "Mountaineer Limited" passenger train. Unfortunately, the budget was so limited that this restyling amounted to little more than a new coat of paint and some seat covers, and although the train would become a favorite of railfans years later, it did little to attract more riders back to the rails.

After the war the railroad pursued a drastic dieselization plan. Quick to realize the economies of the diesel locomotive - the O&W had bought its first in 1941 – the line was completely dieselized by the end of 1948. At about the same time much of its double track right-of-way was converted to single track CTC (Centralized Traffic Control) operation. In a further economy move, the railroad dropped all passenger service after the end of the 1953 summer season. In the last years of its life the O&Wsurvived by shuttling cars between the Lehigh Valley railroad in Scranton, PA and the New Haven at Maybrook, NY. By March of 1957 the losses had become too great and the railroad gave up. Today only a few short stretches of the railroad remain in service, the longest around its own home city of Middletown. What is left of the right of way – that not buried under route 17 or being used as town roads – is being quickly reclaimed by the forests through which it ran. If you know where to look though, you can still see many of the stations now converted to municipal buildings or private residences, but as each year passes less and less of the railroad remains.