Could sections of the O&W have survived 1957?

Just how much traffic existed in that area in the 1920s? I know it was heavily farmed, and there must have been lumber traffic, but what were the major traffic generators?

In the 20's there were a lot of agricultural products outbound, including the very profitable milk business with some finished mfg products.

The O&W was both busy and profitable in those years. In fact they weathered the traditional early depression years quite well not declaring bankruptcy until May 1937 after bituminous and antracite coal sales plummeted along with the milk business. The other thing that hit them hard was the amount of fixed debt. They were very mortgaged and when traffic levels and Railway Operating Income started to seriously decline they were in big trouble. Operations though were pretty busy including the very last day if you were simply a trackside observer and not a bean counter.

After WWII Oriskany Falls generated a substantial number of stone cars but it was largely for upgrading of highways downstate.

Most of the Northern Division was in-bound: lumber, coal, manufactured goods, autos, feed, fertilizer, molasses (for feed), asphalt, chemicals, metals, processed food products, etc. Coal, both anthracite and bituminous was big in CNY into the post WWII era and slacked off in the 50's and 60's and about extinct by rail (Erie Lackawanna) by 1970.

Fulton generated traffic like chocolate (Nestle) and other stuff but much of that traffic went right over to the NYC and down to Dewitt and out. Port of Oswego apparently had inbound newsprint and iron.

The DL&W did well when the O&W closed gaining customers from Norwich, Smyrna, Earlville, Solsville, Bouckville, Oriskany Falls, Hamilton and New Hartford via transload. For instance Bouckville Mills had a portable elevator at Waterville and Jacquay Feed from Hamilton had a transload at Hubbardsville until 1979. THE DL&W picked up the traffic but did not have to take but a few miles of track in the Utica / New Hartford area and a little (for a short time) in Norwich.

White the number of trains on the O&W was still respectable iin 1957, the car count on those trains was not very good. Symbol freights ran with as few as 4-5 cars, although 10-15 was a more common figure. Meanwhile, competing anthracite carriers like the DL&W and the Erie were running symbol freights with 50-100 car counts. Mind you, those competitors were not in good shape themselves... so there is no way that even pieces the O&W (beyond the segments acquired by the Erie and NYC) could have survived without a better customer base.

Depends on the dates but yes there were some very lean symbol freights but then again some good sized ones.

NO-1 / ON-2 would run pretty regular with 25-50 cars Norwich to Oswego

US-2 / SU-1 would normally have 4 F's into Norwich from Mayfield with anywhere from 35-80 cars being a normal day.

The NE trains could be small 5-12 cars but more often than not ran 50-70 from the dispatcher RTM's and other data I have seen. One of these trains was running 122 cars as late as March 1957.

9 & 10 north of Middletown to Norwich was good for 18-40 cars and normally seems to have had a single A-B F unit set.

Rome Local would fill out nicely with 8-25 cars depending on a pick up at Oriskany Falls and the Utica local was nominally the same size, maybe a little smaller but symboled as SU-1 / US-2 north of Norwich belying it's less than symbol freight stature behind an NW-2 peddling mostly local cars.

The problem was that most traffic was in-bound and O&W didn't normally get a sustainable share of that total freight rate and there were too few trains for the fixed plant infrastructure and not enough revenue for the fixed debt load.

I was unclear as to which "area" I meant. I was thinking of the area between the western Adirondacks and Lake Ontario that the LV had apparently been considering entering into in the early 20th century.

oh that area from like Oneida Lake / north of Camden to Watertown ?

Pretty sparse. Any enticement for LVRR would have been Watertown coal and export via St. Lawrence or into Canada I am sure.

It is like the whole area north of Oneida Lake really never took off for the O&W and much of the NYC in that region was more than sufficient for local traffic (Rome - Watertown line) and the reason the LVRR pulled back from Camden rather early.