New York, Ontario and Western Railroad Gold Bond 1905

We are offering a beautifully engraved issued and uncancelled Gold Bond Certificate from the New York, Ontario and Western Railway Company dated 1905. This highly desirable certificate is a 50 year 4 Percent bond backed by Gold from this famous railroad. This item has an ornate border with an old steam train vignette.

Shortly after the O&W; was incorporated, its owners became involved in the promotion and construction of the New York, West Shore & Buffalo, a route that eventually would parallel Cornelius Vanderbilt's New York Central & Hudson River all the way to Buffalo via Albany, N.Y. Naturally, NYC&HR; viewed the West Shore as a nuisance or blackmail scheme. Complicated financial arrangements existed between the O&W; and the West Shore which were detrimental to the corporate health of the former. However, this was mitigated by the West Shores construction of a branch from its main line at Cornwall, N.Y., to Middletown in 1883 and by opening terminal facilities in Weehawken, on the Hudson River across from New York City, in 1884.

These projects provided the O&W; with a more-reliable and more-direct route to the metropolitan area than had been available with the NJM connection. The O&W-West; Shore combination was dissolved when the later entered bankruptcy in 1884 and was subsequently leased by the NYC. The Middletown Branch became part of the O&W;, and NYC permitted O&W; to continue using the West Shore between Cornwall and Weehawken. The O&W; underwent an administrative reorganization after its involvement with the West Shore came to an end.

Thomas P. Fowler, a talented lawyer formerly with the NYC's legal department, became the new president. He is reputed to have said that he wondered why the O&W; had been built and why, after entering bankruptcy, it hadn't been allowed to stay there. Regardless of his comment, he must have seen some potential in the line, and with the American economy in a period of expansion, he set out to make a respectable property of the NYO&W.; During Fowlers term, the railroad significantly aided in, or undertook the development of, several industries. It firmly established itself as a tourist carrier to the resort hotels and camps in the mountains of Orange, Sullivan, and Delaware counties (often referred to as the lower Catskills).

The road expanded its operations in the haulage of milk and dairy products and, most importantly, it became a carrier of anthracite coal by tapping the northern Wyoming Valley coal field in northeastern Pennsylvania through the railroads most-ambitious expansion program