Nostalgia & History > NYO&W: prospering in 1911, it says here

Guess they thought anthracite would flow forever

#786 - Railway age gazette v.51 (1911). - Full View | HathiTrust Digital Library

That pretty much sums it up.  Anthracite paid a lot of bills,  and the NYO&W paid dividends and interest on bonds into the Great Depression. 

It went into the hole again in the 1930s,  and never really exited.

Lackawanna484 Wrote:
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> That pretty much sums it up.  Anthracite paid a
> lot of bills,  and the NYO&W paid dividends and
> interest on bonds into the Great Depression. 
>
> It went into the hole again in the 1930s,  and
> never really exited.

Building the extension into the Lackawanna Valley coal fields in 1890 really "saved" the NYO&W.  Once the anthracite business dried up, the O&W went back to being the railroad from nowhere to nowhere with the predictable ending.

The O&W also in the early 1900s had an incredible passenger services to the Catskills, hauling millions of passengers a year, which would disappear as the 1920s approached.
The roller-coaster profile of the O&W in the article is evident.