The New York, Ontario & Western, also known as the "Old Woman" or the "Old and Weary", was the first major railroad in the northeastern US to go bankrupt, in 1957. By 1976, every major railroad in the northeast had been merged into Conrail or abandoned outright. The NYO&W served as the canary in a coal mine for the railroad industry. Its reasons for failure were inherent in its construction in the 1870s, it was quite possibly a railroad that should never have been built. The NYO&W began life as the New York & Oswego Midland, in 1865. Two prominent New York politicians of the time, DeWitt Littlejohn and Henry Low, conceived of a railroad connecting New York City with the port of Oswego on Lake Ontario. To raise money for its construction, Littlejohn and Low wrote a piece of legislation known as the Town Bonding Act. Towns and cities that bonded themselves to the railroad were rewarded with stations along the route. This strategy resulted in a roundabout route between Oswego and Middletown that bypassed every major city inbetween. Larger cities such as Syracuse, Utica, and Binghamton were already served by several other railroads, and had no interest in Midland bonds. From Middletown, the Midland obtained trackage rights to Jersey City, New Jersey, and the final leg of the journey was by ferry across the Hudson River.