The New York & Oswego Midland Railroad was incorporated in 1866 on a route from Oswego on Lake Ontario to Jersey City, New Jersey, but after the panic of 1873 it entered bankruptcy, and in 1880 new investors created the New York, Ontario, & Western Railway. In March 1957, the O & W became the first US Class I railroad to be abandoned. Its 17-mile Delhi Branch, completed in early 1872, connected with the mainline at Walton and ran through Colchester Station, Hawleys, Hamden, Delancey, and Fraser to Delhi. The branch was vital to these communities, bringing needed supplies and carrying farm output to city markets, and after milk train service began in the 1880’s it became the railroad’s most prolific milk-shipping segment. Passenger service reached as many as four trains each way daily, including mixed trains that combined freight or milk cars with passenger coaches, a frequency that was essential in the era of dirt roads, even for travel between branch villages. Regular passenger service on the branch ended in 1930, and passenger service on the mixed train ceased in 1948. The railroad also ran excursion trains to destinations including the Thousand Islands, New York City, Coney Island, and Washington D.C., with Delhi Branch passengers connecting at Walton, while branch-specific excursions carried riders to county fairs in Delhi or Walton, the Ringling Brothers circus, GAR gatherings, Masonic meetings, and other events. In Hamden, daily mixed trains delivered feed, dry goods, mercantile goods, groceries, fruit, and coal at reduced prices and in greater variety than had previously been available, while outbound shipments first included butter, select corps, and cattle and later blue stone and milk. Hamden was a busy stop for many years and one of the few places on the O & W, and by far the smallest, where track ran in the street, doing so for nearly a mile on the east side of Route 10 after entering the village from the south. The station, built in 1872 and closed in 1954, stood at the south end of the village. In the late 1800’s, firms such as Wm. Lewis & Son and Combs Brothers shipped significant quantities of butter and veal from the station. Industries clustered on sidings near the station included a feed business, two creameries, and a storehouse. Malcolm Crawford started the feed business in 1895, and it became Crawford Brothers, a large wholesale feed dealer that also had plants in Walton beginning in 1907. Borden’s built a large creamery and ice house at the south end of Hamden in 1900; it did a large business and became a show plant in Borden advertising literature before burning in 1925 and not being rebuilt, though the brick wall of its loading ramp still stands. A smaller creamery, Hamden’s first, was built in 1891 just north of the future Borden’s site by the Howell Brothers of Goshen, New York, and later owners included W.C.A. Hitt & Co. and McDermott-Bunger. Combs Brothers built a small storehouse that also handled coal in 1882. At the north end of town, the Hamden Co-operative Creamery Company opened a creamery in 1902, and in 1912 an adjacent milk sugar plant was built to use the milk by-products it generated. Ferndale Farms acquired that facility in 1931 and operated it until 1964.