New Jersey Midland Railway Letter and Memo - 1877 dated Americana Group

Letter, memorandum and prospectus for the New Jersey Midland Railway. The New Jersey Midland Railway was a 19th-century predecessor to the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway (NYS&W) that operated in Northern New Jersey and Orange County, New York.

The New Jersey Midland Railway can trace its roots back to the failed New Jersey, Hudson & Delaware Railroad (NJH&D), chartered in 1832 to connect industrial Paterson, New Jersey, east to the ports along the Hudson Waterfront opposite New York City at Hoboken and west to Pennsylvania at the Delaware Water Gap. Though the company did not construct any track, the charter remained active until 1870, and the company cleared a right of way from Sandyston to New York.

In the mid-1860s, several companies were formed to create railroads across northern New Jersey. The earliest of these, the Hoboken, Ridgefield and Paterson Railroad was chartered in 1866 to connect Paterson with the ports along the Hudson River waterfront; various logistical issues ensured this company would not build anything. More successful was the New Jersey Western Railroad, which had built about ten miles of trackage from Hawthorne/Hawthorne (NYS&W station) to Bloomingdale from 1868 to 1870, including the Wortendyke (NYS&W station) before it was consolidated into the NJ Midland. Read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey_Midland_Railway