I'm not looking for a fight here; I'm just playing "devil's advocate" because too many folks never get to see how the "rest of them" see what they do......

In the view of the public:
The RTT advocates want to take a derelict, abandoned property and convert it to a public asset, usable and accessible by virtually all at no cost, while entailing little to no maintenance costs.
Meanwhile, the railroad advocates harbor delusions that the old railroad line in question, which has certainly outlived what usefulness it had through no fault of its own or we wouldn't be having this discussion, should be maintained in perpetuity, probably to become a ward of the government, just in case someone might get an excuse to ship freight cars--or, worse, that it become some "playground" where rich folks can "play trains" and charge lots of money to ride old junky trains, while forcibly keeping people from enjoying the same nature/views/etc. by prohibiting trespassing, just so they can run a train or two a week in the summer.....

This is the public relations problem you will have, rightly or wrongly. And it doesn't just apply to the Adirondack scenario. It can be applied, rightly or wrongly, to everything from the lowliest speeder operation to the Grand Canyon Railway and the Strasburg RR, the EBT, the Durango & Silverton, the WW&F, the Cuyahoga Valley, Napa Valley Wine Train, the trackage run by the California State RR Museum and North Carolina Transportation Museum, and everything in between.

Your job, whatever your operation may be, is to convince enough people that might harbor this mindset that you are better than that, that your operation/proposal brings more to the community and society than their proposals do. For some of you--Grand Canyon, Durango, Strasburg--that shouldn't be hard at all. For almost everyone else, you will encounter this mindset someday, and they can well gain support faster than you may like.

And that's just the thing that makes my blood boil--the falseness, the lies, that get accepted. Damn it, isn't what we try to do hard enough without this, too?

You will notice that I did not highlight that some of us harbor delusions, that some of us might have a bit of money (though certainly more of us don't than do), and that some of our equipment may not be of the best caliber. That's because that can be true, and too often has. Those who have worked with this well know the reasons why, some of which are our fault (the contentiousness of some internal arguments, old guys who think they have a full-sized model railroad, other things that have been discussed here), and others which are inherent in what we do (much of that relating to the sheer size of everything we work with short of a park train, including miles of track and right of way to maintain, often with inadequate resources).

You want to know how the trail people get ahead? I think it's because all they have to do is agitate. It's a little hard to work and advocate at the same time, especially as some of us have "real" jobs to work at, homes and business to maintain and run, and families who also need us.

The trail crowd will advocate and get public money for their projects that we don't have available--and in fact, that has been one tack the trail people against the Catskill Mountain have been using--that money's available for a trail, but not for the railroad. Never mind that the railroad is costing nothing to the county, and is even paying rent, and that the trail will cost almost $6 million to build and run close to $60,000 per year to maintain--and that's with figures from the anti-Adirondack bunch, no less! Never mind that the Catskill Mountain has been doing miracles in trackwork lately, never mind that these facts about the money have been hammered and hammered by myself and others in the paper up there, the trail people still have at least some support, or at least are able to bully railroad supporting politicians. They don't have to actually work on their projects, like the volunteers at Catskill Mountain and Adirondack Scenic.

In short, it's a damned double standard we have to live with. Anyone else doing anything even remotely like what we do--historic preservation, volunteer labor, documentation, meeting government safety standards--would be universally praised. Instead, "We don't get no respect, no respect at all!" Frankly, I'm more than a little tired of dealing with it and the other rot, too.

This doesn't detract from the truth of what you say. It's just that it's so discouraging, disgusting, and enraging that we have to deal with it at all on top of all the other stuff we deal with.

Sorry if this is a rant, but I'm just tired. . .hope you understand.

And if it's worth anything, those who are closer to Kingston, N.Y. than I am claim support for the railroad there is growing, largely because the truth of the numbers is coming out and sinking in. I can personally tell you that a couple of the supporters are looking sillier and sillier with their benefits claims, including the fellow who says money is available for the trail but not the railroad.

The biggest problem right now may be an opportunistic, abusive, arrogant, tyranical bully of a county executive who wants to see the railroad destroyed because he thinks the trail will boost his political career. That assessment comes from someone who actually met him, and described the meeting as "an eye-opener."

Perhaps the president of the Rails to Trails Conservancy should tell something to his General Counsel, Andrea Ferster, about the benefits of rails with trails.

http://www.railstotrails.org/ourWork/ad ... index.html

She was hired by Ulster County last year as part of their program to oust the CMRR:

C13-00289 COUNTY ATTORNEY FERSTER ANDREA C ESQ 6/5/2013 6/4/2014 ADVISE & ASSIST IN FILING W/SURFACE TRANSPORTATION BOARD RATES: NTE $10,000.00

http://ulstercountyny.gov/sites/default ... tracts.xls

Her work against the CMRR makes Laughlin's words ring very hollow.

EH

Just some things to ponder:

http://www.governing.com/topics/transpo ... -rail.html

http://www.governing.com/columns/urban- ... abama.html

http://www.governing.com/topics/energy- ... capes.html

And it's nice to see that at least one "real" railroad journalist sees us in a favorable light.

http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/blo ... -prep.html

Maybe we have a higher purpose. . .