a bridge line for freight connecting to several regional carriers. Motorailers were employed for passenger service. The NYS&W fell on hard times during the economic recession of 1957. The NYS&W lost its western connection to the Lehigh and New England Railroad when the L&NE ceased operations in 1961, resulting in the NYS&W pulling up all its track west of Sparta Junction (which now comprises what is now known as the Paulinskill Valley Trail). Thereafter, the NYS&W sold-off its nearly new Budd passenger cars and replaced them with second-hand used equipment. Desperate to close its money-losing commuter service, the railroad's trustees offered its commuters $1,000 each to stop using the trains. Permission to end commuter service was granted in 1966. Washouts caused by Tropical Storm Doria (1971) cut off other connections, and the railroad retreated to Butler, New Jersey. Under ownership of the Delaware Otsego Corporation The NYS&W declared bankruptcy in 1976 after failing to pay New Jersey state taxes, though managed to stay out of Conrail, which had surrounded it. The bankruptcy court ordered that the railroad be abandoned and its assets sold. By then, the NYS&W was down to a line from Croxton and Edgewater through Paterson to Butler. The State of New Jersey, aware of Delaware Otsego Corporation's reputation at rehabilitating short lines, asked them to take over the railroad. Delaware Otsego was founded in 1966 to operate a section of the former New York Central Railroad Catskill Mountain Branch outside Oneonta, New York. This was the first of many cast-off short line acquisitions. Between 1971 and 1986, D.O. acquired several other branches and short lines, including the Cooperstown Branch of the Delaware & Hudson Railway in 1971; the Richfield Springs Branch of the Erie Lackawanna Railway (EL) in 1973; the Fonda, Johnstown and Gloversville Railroad in 1974 and the EL Honesdale Branch in 1976. In 1980, the Delaware Otsego Corporation purchased the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway. In 1988, Guilford Transportation Industries, (now Pan Am Railways), then owner of The Delaware and Hudson Railway, declared that road bankrupt and abandoned it after two nasty labor strikes. The New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway was ordered by the federal government to operate the D&H until a new buyer could be found. In 1990, CP Rail (now Canadian Pacific) bought the Delaware & Hudson Railway System. 1990 saw the NYS&W end service on its Edgewater Branch, a long