, which was named after the NJ Midland which built its right-of-way through the borough The New Jersey Midland Railway can trace its earliest roots back to 1828, when John Langdon Sullivan surveyed the first route across
northern New Jersey with the intent of transporting
Pennsylvania coal by rail to industrial
Paterson, New Jersey. While
New Jersey industry had supply of iron ore, it needed local sources of coal to smelt it following shortages of British coal after the
War of 1812. The
Morris Canal had begun operation for this purpose by 1831, but was seasonal and slow; industry demanded better. The New Jersey, Hudson & Delaware Railroad (
NJH&D) was chartered in March of 1832 as the fifth railroad in New Jersey; it was based on Sullivan's surveyed route. It would connect
Paterson east to the ports along the
Hudson Waterfront opposite
New York City at
Hoboken, and west to Pennsylvania at the
Delaware Water Gap. Due to financial difficulties incurred during the
Panic of 1837, the company did not construct anything until 1867, but its charter remained active. Further set back by the
Panic of 1857, the railroad sold its charter to the Pennsylvania Coal Company. By the mid-1860s, several companies were formed to create railroads across northern New Jersey. The earliest of these, the Hoboken, Ridgefield and Paterson Railroad (
HR&P), was chartered in March of 1866 to connect Paterson with the
ports along the
Hudson River waterfront; various logistical issues ensured this company would not actually build anything. More successful was the New Jersey Western Railroad (
NJW), chartered in 1867, which had built about ten miles of trackage from the vicinity of
Hawthorne west to
Bloomingdale. This attracted the attention of
DeWitt Clinton Littlejohn, founder of the
New York and Oswego Midland Railroad (
NYOM) of
Oswego, New York. He envisioned the New Jersey Western as a possible final eastern link from
Lake Ontario to
New York City for his railroad, as the NYOM had no charter itself to build in New Jersey. To that end, the New Jersey Midland Railway (
NJM) was formed in 1870 as a consolidation of the
NJW, the
NJH&D, the
HR&P, the
Sussex Valley Railroad, and the
Hudson Connecting Railway. With the final barrier to the waterfront being the
Hudson Palisades, the original plan included a cut through them near
Englewood to run south along the river to
Weehawken, but the company lacked the money to do so. It instead made arrangements to run through the
Pennsylvania Railroad's cut from
Marion Junction through
Bergen Hill in
Jersey City to their
Exchange Place Terminal. By December 20, the first locomotive would run on the NJM; the 'Passaic' built by
Rogers Locomotive and Machine Works in Paterson. In 1871 the Midland built as far west as Butler, with the first train running on April 27. Later the railroad would reach
Two Bridges/Beaver Lake through
Sussex County, including construction of the
Backwards Tunnel in December of 1871. The NJM would reach the New York state line at
Hanford, New Jersey, just south of
Unionville, New York, to meet with the Middletown, Unionville and Water Gap Railroad (
MUWGRR). This new railroad made the
Ogden Mine Railroad obsolete. The section of the railroad from Ogdensburg north was later known as the Hanford Branch once the "new" connection south toward the
Delaware Water Gap was built beginning in the 1880s. The successor NYS&W would later abandon its Hanford Branch in 1958. The railroad would return to the area in 1986 with a shifted route to run along a parallel section of the former
Lehigh and Hudson River Railway right-of-way between
Sparta Junction and
Campbell Hall, New York. By 1872, the Midland line opened between
Middletown, New York and
Jersey City including trackage rights over the
MUWGRR. It was marketed as a unified "Midland Railway" but also described as "The New Jersey Division of The New York Midland Railway." The first train ran May 1. The Midland also built a line through the Ridgefields by 1872, but with no station. It joined the
Erie Railroad Northern Branch at Granton Junction near
Babbitt, and reached the community of
New Durham (near the point where the
Susquehanna Transfer would later be located, now under
New Jersey Route 495). In September of 1873, the NYOM would lease the NJM, but this was shortly undone by the
Panic of 1873. This resulted in the NYOM falling into financial trouble and the NJM taking ownership of the line from Jersey City to Middletown in November. ==Bankruptcy and formation of the NYS&W==