I think Steve's point was that the (bankrupt) O&W owed much, much more
in per diem payments than it could ever hope to receive from its
connections, given the paltry number of O&W cars that could go
off-line. I would venture to say that most of those O&W cars were
hoppers, which would likely stay on line or close to home. And so, the
O&W would have been shoveling per diem money out, while receiving next
to nothing in per diem receipts.

Walt Lankenau

--- In STMFC@..., timboconnor@... wrote:

Steve

Per diem in the 1950's was the same for all box cars, and was quite
low -- IIRC less than $3 a day. Unless the NYSW was a parking lot for
offline cars, I doubt they suffered from per diem overhead. After

all, if

they could move a car across the system in 24 hours, they might avoid
having to pay any per diem at all.

Tim

-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "Steve Lucas" <stevelucas3@...>

The Jan., 1953 ORER shows the NYO&W as having 146 cars suitable for
interchange. For an over 400-mile Class One pike, this road must
have had substantial per diem costs. No wonder that they went under
in 1957.

Steve Lucas.