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. Formation and construction 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. The New Jersey Midland Railway (NJM) was formed in 1870 as a consolidation of several smaller railroads, including the NJH&D and the NJW. The original plan was to cut through the Hudson Palisades near Englewood and run south along the Hudson River to Weehawken, but the company lacked the money to do so, and 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. In 1871 built west from Two Bridges/Beaver Lake through Sussex County, including construction of the Backwards Tunnel, to the New York state line at Hanford, New Jersey, just south of Unionville, New York. The Ogden Mine Railroad was made obsolete. This was later known as the Hanford Branch. By 1872 the NJ Midland completed the line between Hackensack and Newfoundland. It also built a line through the Ridgefields by 1872, but with no station. It joined the Erie Railroad Northern Branch at Granton Junction near Babbit, and reached the community of New Durham (near the point now under New Jersey Route 495 where the Susquehanna Transfer had later been located). Hudson Connecting Railway The charter for the NJ Midland prevented it from crossing