considered the most ruthless financial operator in America. Gould's major railroad east of the Mississippi River was the Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway (Wabash). The Wabash mainline ran from St. Louis, Missouri, to Toledo, Ohio, where it was forced to deliver its railroad traffic to William H. Vanderbilt's Lake Shore Railroad for delivery to the eastern United States. Jay Gould and William Vanderbilt together oversaw all east–west rail traffic in the mid-west. The Seney Syndicate, owners of a railroad, the Lake Erie and Western Railroad, were interested in tapping new sources of revenue. The stage was set for the creation of the New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad. Early years The Seney Syndicate, headed by banker George I. Seney, met at Seney's New York City bank and organized the New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railway Company on February 3, 1881. The original proposal for the NYC&StL was a railroad west from Cleveland, Ohio, to Chicago, Illinois, with a branch to St. Louis, Missouri. On April 13, 1881, the New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railway Company bought the Buffalo, Cleveland and Chicago Railway, a railroad that had been surveyed from the west side of Cleveland, Ohio, to Buffalo, New York, running parallel to William Vanderbilt's Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway. The idea of an east–west railroad across northern Ohio was very popular with the people of Ohio. They wanted to break the high freight rates charged by Jay Gould and William Vanderbilt. No one was less popular in Ohio than William Vanderbilt since the December 29, 1876, collapse of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway's Ashtabula River trestle, where 64 people had been injured and 92 were killed or died later from injuries. Another reason for the popularity of the New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railway was the positive economic impact on any cities that a new railroad went through. During a newspaper war to attract the NYC&St.L, the Norwalk, Ohio, Chronicle Newspaper referred to it as a "... double-track, nickel-plated railroad." The railroad adopted the nickname and it became better known as the Nickel Plate Road. It was decided that building would start along the surveyed route between Cleveland and Buffalo rather than build the branch to St. Louis. Five hundred days later, the Nickel Plate's single-track mainline from Buffalo to Chicago was complete. The railroad was estimated to require 90,000 long tons