Could sections of the O&W have survived 1957?

I'm sure everyone here knows that the New York Ontario & Western Railway never could have continued as a contiguous railroad post-1957, but what if it had been broken up (a la Ma Bell) by the bankruptcy court instead of liquidated?

Does anyone think that certain sections of the line could have been kept intact and operated by "baby" O&W spin-offs and remained viable at least through the Conrail formation?

I'm sure the MNR would have loved to get their hands on some of the O&W ROW that ran through the Catskills had they existed in '57. Could a railroad from Weehawken to Cadosia have survived until it could be acquired by MNR?
The section from Sidney to Norwich probably could have been a decent Binghamton bypass connecting the DL&W/EL and D&H. There was still plenty of industry in Norwich at the time that could have made use of a direct D&H connection.
Oriskany Falls had some industry that utilized the connection to the NYC at Utica too. Perhaps the section between Oriskany Falls and Utica could have soldiered on independently?

Any other ideas?

If, by MNR, you are referring to Metro North, the answer is no- it couldn't have happened. Metro North's predecessor MTA was created in 1965, so the O&W was already several very long strips of weeds by that point. Metro North, as it exists today, came into being in 1983.

I think the cold hard truth as to what could have survived post March 29, 1957 is what in actuality DID survive. The Fulton to Oswego portion to the NYC, a short segments in Rome, Norwich, Middletown, Scranton / Mayfield, Firthcliff, Utica, couple of sidings in Sidney and probably a few I missed.

The DL&W looked at Norwich to Utica as a way to get around Paris Hill and also cut down on street running in Utica by using the O&W Fay Street alignment rather than Schuyler Street. Indeed there was a healthy stone business in Oriskany Falls but I suspect low revenue and the cost of maintaining track would have meant additional capital beyond acquisition at a time when DL&W didn't have it. It is interesting that they did get major portions of the Norwich-Clinton business by transload including customers from Smyrna, Earlville, Hamilton, Bouckville & Oriskany Falls. Good deal to get the business without having to acquire the tracks.

I don't see an advantage to Sidney to Norwich. I believe the UVRR looked into that, maybe even had an option for it but it didn't make much economic sense. Most of the traffic was terminating and division of rates would not have been wanted by the carriers already handling it. The DL&W had the lions share of the Norwich business and took over the tracks from the interchange in the "Lower Yard" up through town to Crane Silo I believe. This served the Norwich Knitting Mill with coal and a few other businesses. All was gone by sometime in 1960. No reason for the D&H to come over the hill and deal with Lyon Brook Bridge ... again for much of the business that was terminating.

Much of the O&W business was just too thin and spread out and certainly there were no where near enough customers to support a stand alone Middletown to Cadosia railroad to no where. I think that Governor Harriman urged very strongly that the Erie look at all or some of it very seriously but that didn't go very far; access to the Pine Bush branch north of Middletown. No one could see any use in the Kingston Branch either. The Rome Branch at Westmoreland could be served off the NYC (Westshore) and Rome itself by acquiring about a mile of O&W by NYC RR from the interchange near James Street to the Canal. DL&W picked up all of the Utica - New Hartford trackage but saw no sense in extending to Clinton, nor grabbing the Rome Branch for a share of that traffic. Of course NYC RR got a good buy picking up the Fulton business and going into Oswego and that tied in well with there existing lin north of Syracuse to Fulton.

I don't see room for another carrier be it existing shortline like UVRR, newly created shortline, or other Class 1 like D&H. What almost did come to pass ca. 1952 was a NYNH&H purchase. Apparently the New Haven eventually came to their senses and perhaps recalled their last entanglement with O&W that ended with the O&W filing Section 77 in May 1937.

A small piece in Onieda also went to the NYC.

You probably could have taken any of those individual segments and set up an industrial railroad on them, maybe even handled a few more miles and customers than what did survive, but a lot of what did survive is gone today or sits OOS with no customers. Even the Fulton-Oswego segment is pretty quiet these days.

Remember that the same reason that drove the O&W out of business was acting on all the other railroads: the ICC. Surprised that the deregulation effort was pushed through by a Democrat.

Matt Langworthy wrote:If, by MNR, you are referring to Metro North, the answer is no- it couldn't have happened. Metro North's predecessor MTA was created in 1965, so the O&W was already several very long strips of weeds by that point. Metro North, as it exists today, came into being in 1983.

In my scenario, a spin off railroad would have operated the Cadosia-Weekawken line after 3-29-1957. So it would have been around to be acquired by the Metropolitan Transit Authority in 1965. Could that section (or parts of it) have remained profitable enough post-1957 to survive until they could be acquired?

Seems like if it could have been profitable, someone would have picked it up. I seem to remember reading someplace some ruminations that the D&H considered buying enough of the O&W to give them a route into New York City, but ultimately passed it up. Maybe here on the D&H board? I forget where.

chen1234 wrote:In my scenario, a spin off railroad would have operated the Cadosia-Weekawken line after 3-29-1957. So it would have been around to be acquired by the Metropolitan Transit Authority in 1965. Could that section (or parts of it) have remained profitable enough post-1957 to survive until they could be acquired?

No. I have a soft spot for the O&W because they were in Railroads You Can Model... but it was a Class 1 Railroad with symbol freights that were often 10-15 cars in length. That's not going to be profitable for long distance hauling, even in the post-Staggers era. Speaking of Railroads You Can Model, it mentions that passenger service on the O&W ended in 1953... nearly 4 years before the RR ceased operations altogether. Methinks there was not going to be enough passenger service for a spin-off to last one year past 1957, let alone nine!

The last passenger service on the O & W ran between Weehawken and Roscoe and it was a summer only operation. It ended
in September, 1953.
The O & W was done in by the automobile, bus and very high operating costs. It was never profitable at least in its later
years.
There was not enough bridge line traffic to make it profitable and too little local business as well. Maybe one or two more
sections might have survived if they had been picked up by one of the connecting carriers but apparently no other railroad
wanted to get involved beyond what actually did.
I went to Middletown not too long after the last runs and there were still people working around the offices in the old
station as well as the shop where the F units were getting well cared for at the time. A worker at the station graciously
gave me a copy of their last employee timetable.
Noel Weaver

chen1234 wrote:

Matt Langworthy wrote:If, by MNR, you are referring to Metro North, the answer is no- it couldn't have happened. Metro North's predecessor MTA was created in 1965, so the O&W was already several very long strips of weeds by that point. Metro North, as it exists today, came into being in 1983.

In my scenario, a spin off railroad would have operated the Cadosia-Weekawken line after 3-29-1957. So it would have been around to be acquired by the Metropolitan Transit Authority in 1965. Could that section (or parts of it) have remained profitable enough post-1957 to survive until they could be acquired?

The MTA acquired the LIRR in 1965, but did not touch the Grand Central or Hoboken services until 1970. They began funding the Penn Central services out of Grand Central in 1970, and I think provided some funding to the EL for the New York State portion of service to Port Jervis. In 1983, they began direct operation through Metro-North and made an agreement with NJT for the operation to Port Jervis.

There would be no operation from Weehawken. The New York Central shut down that passenger terminal in 1959, and the passenger ferry was abandoned, too. You'd have no terminal to operate from, and you'd have to negotiate space in Hoboken. When you talk of "profit," absolutely no passenger runs made a profit, they made up any deficits from hauling mail and express. The loss of mail contracts is what led to the end of many passenger trains. Your proposed service to Cadosia would have to be subsidized from the start, and there'd be absolutely no chance of that until at least 1970.

We're tilting at windmills here. If the O&W had any chance of being reorganized or restructured, it would have happened. Even in the 1930s, O&W passenger service was sparse-- even as late as 1930, no part of the O&W had more than two trains a day. The freight traffic was scarce, it was only the Scranton division and the coal traffic that kept the line alive into the 1930s... Once the coal fields were tapped out, that was pretty much the end of the O&W, it was just a long slide down from there.

It's fun to ponder "what if." Your proposed scenario sounds like it would make an excellent model railroad, but in real life would not be possible.

lvrr325 wrote:Seems like if it could have been profitable, someone would have picked it up. I seem to remember reading someplace some ruminations that the D&H considered buying enough of the O&W to give them a route into New York City, but ultimately passed it up. Maybe here on the D&H board? I forget where.

I had heard that the New Haven had acquired a large portion of the O&W's stock and contemplated a takeover, but the economic realities of the 1930s set in. I think the New Haven had considered access to the coal fields of Scranton as a possible traffic source and wasn't really interested in the route through the Catskills at all... But it never happened and I don't have enough info to say one way or the other.

-otto-

Noel Weaver wrote:The last passenger service on the O & W ran between Weehawken and Roscoe and it was a summer only operation. It ended
in September, 1953.

I just got a copy of that timetable and I will post it soon. I also picked up one from the late 1930s that is also pretty interesting... I will scan and post as soon as I can.

The only what-if scenario I've come up with that could have made the O&W last past 1957 would have required them to merge with the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg before the NYC purchased that line.


I won't repeat too much of what's already posted on that, but it's more or less an end-to-end merger. Combining those two roads gives an independent of NYC Montreal-New York route, and forces NYC to use the Adirondack as it's primary route for any traffic of that nature. It might have been enough of a niche to last through Conrail. It also creates yet another NY-Buffalo route that would probably draw a little traffic as well. Which might be enough for them to look attractive for say, CN to purchase.

Adding the Syracuse & Chenango Valley (NYC WS Earlville branch) might top that off, giving another alternate route that would allow Syracuse to be on their main line, but wouldn't be required.

If nothing else it's a fantastic concept for a model railroad -

I can't see an RW&O / NYO&W merger although it would have made a neat model railroad concept.

RW&O was a pretty "blue chip" property after Parsons got it and Sloan was sent packing (and also in pre-Sloan days). By most accounts the Lake Ontario Shore was a mistake that weakened the company. However Parsons seems to have gotten the company back into good shape and indeed at least glanced at the O&W but found it to be too weak and over capitalized. Certainly the O&W was not in a league to buy out RW&O and RW&O was not about to weaken its position by taking the O&W. They (RW&O) made a good move by picking up the U&BR and then leveraging themselves into a sale to Vanderbilt. So I don't see the economics coming into play of lost opportunity. The Syracuse - Earlville route was originally surveyed by the Midland but was not a good through route and by the time in question to provide a link would have had to have had considerable capital put into it to be feasible. Certainly the RW&O LOS line was a weak extension that never developed although the O&W looked at it and advertised it as a western connection (to the Wabash) and was the route of the Chicago and New York Flyer for a while (NYO&W Trains 5 & 6) and I use the term "Flyer" rather loosely.

The Adirondack connection was an extension of the narrow gage Herkimer, Newport & Poland spear headed by Dr. William Seward Webb connecting Herkimer to Malone and Montreal. it came on the scene just before the RW&O sold to Vanderbilt. Up into the 1950's though alot of trains / freight went north from Utica by way of the RW&O via Rome, the old Black River via Lyons Falls and the Adirondack via Resmen and Tupper Lake. The poor step child of that was the Herkimer connection that lost prestige and use other than local service to operations out of Utica as a terminal.

*** Yes indeed the NYC RR took over a short section NYO&W at Oneida that Conrail actually ended up scrapping about 1979 I believe. But they didn't go north to Durhamville or south to Munnsville and pretty much by 1977 I think the most of the Oneida business was gone, if not all.

As for the New Haven, they had controlling interest in O&W from about 1912 via House of Morgan I think. That was the problem in 1937 as the New Haven had to divest itself of the O&W interest and since Joseph Nuelle had just resigned as President, Edward Buckland the NYNH&H President became defacto President of NYO&W (see mention of previous post) causing a bit of an uneeded mess.

Possibly if the O&W became a "shortline" or ran with a shortline mentality post 1937 they could have lasted for a while but probably not beyond the mid-1960's or the Penn Central creation. There was possiblity that a sale could have been executed to Pinsley in the early 1950's but the bankruptcy judge stated he had no authority to sell the railroad, that was a matter of the refunding mortgage bondholders. It got real messy after that with the bondholders presenting a reorganization plan (1956) but eventually they decided to hold out for liquidation ($10 million dollars I f I remember).

Oh, I agree it wouldn't be a great railroad, it would be at the biggest disadvantage for NY-Buffalo traffic out of all the possible routes there were before Conrail. On the other hand, for traffic from northern NY to New York City, you'd have a weak NYC line (the Adirondack) and an at the least equally round-about D&H-LV (or CNJ) route as competition. It would probably come down to how well and how interested the NYC was in competing for that traffic, and what they were able to actually do about it. Long term it still becomes redundant to run the actual O&W lines short of a merger or buy-out by another road (I like the idea of it becoming an arm of Canadian National).

But I'm not full up on the history of the north end of what became Conrail's Montreal Secondary to know just how it might work, if it could have worked.

Don't forget the NYS&W and the NYO&W discussed merging in the early 1940's. They even had a name picked out: New York, Susquehanna & Ontario.