The New York, Chicago and St. Louis…

The New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railway Company buys the Buffalo, Cleveland and Chicago Railway, a railroad that been surveyed from the west side of Cleveland, Ohio to Buffalo, New York running parallel to Vanderbilt's Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway, on April 13, 1881.

The idea of an east-west railroad across northern Ohio is very popular with the people of Ohio, who want to break the high freight rates charged by Gould and Vanderbilt.

No one is less popular in Ohio than William Vanderbilt since the December 29, 1876 collapse of Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway's Ashtabula River trestle, where sixty-four people had been injured and nninety-two were killed or died later from injuries.

Another reason for the popularity of the New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railway is the positive economic impact on cities that any new railroad goes through at this time.

During a newspaper war to attract the New York, Chicago and St. Louis, the Norwalk, Ohio Chronicle Newspaper referrs to the New York, Chicago and St. Louis as "... double-track nickel-plated railroad."

The New York, Chicago and St. Louis will adopt the nickname and it will become better known as the Nickel Plate Road.