From the 1870s to the early 1980s, the FJ&G held a successful and profitable transportation business, hauling workers, salesmen, and executives of the very large number of glove manufacturing companies in the area to the New York Central (NYC) station at Schenectady.

In their final years, the FJ&G was controlled by the Delaware Otsego Corporation (DO), but following a loss of a major customer, the railroad was shut down and abandoned in 1984.

Gloversville, named after several glove companies in the area (237 in 1905), was at the northern end of the FJ&G for a few years before the railroad extended northward by business owners.

Numerous FJ&G passengers were unloaded at Northville and continued on by horsedrawn hack or stage to Adirondack destinations to the north, including Wells, Lake Pleasant and Piseco.

By 1932, FJ&G management concluded that reequipping the passenger car fleet on the electric-powered line would reverse their losses, in spite of the ongoing Great Depression.

As late as the 1950s, FJ&G still operated a daily passenger run to the village of Broadalbin to maintain their charter, using a single wood-clad 1880s vintage coach—commonly carrying as little as two passengers—coupled to a diesel switcher.

[4] In the early 1980s, Gloversville and Johnstown-based leather firms abandoned the railroad to begin relying on truck-shipping, and the FJ&G's final remaining major customer, Coleco, closed their toy-manufacturing facility to concentrate on computers.

A small portion of the roadbed south of Johnstown was redeveloped for a Walmart Distribution Center, and the former right-of-way in Vail Mills near routes 30 and 29 is soon to be altered with the intersection being converted to a traffic circle.

If the rails to trails is to continue, the FJ&G will need to be paved from Denny's Crossing toward Vail Mills to form a connection in that area and onward into Broadalbin.