It just doesn't stop.

I have waited a week to allow the posting of a reply by Mr. Riffin. There being none, I direct your attention to:

Docket Number: AB_290_293_X
Case Title: NORFOLK SOUTHERN RAILWAY COMPANY--ABANDONMENT EXEMPTION--IN NORFOLK AND VIRGINIA BEACH, VA
General Filing Type: Motion To Strike
Filed On: 09/06/2007
Filed For: Norfolk Southern Corporation
http://www.stb.dot.gov/filings/all.nsf/ ... enDocument

This is a forty-two (42) page document filed by James R. Paschall, Esquire, the Senior General Attorney for Norfolk Southern. Summarized in layman’s English it says, “We’ve had enough of this character – Please make him go away.”

Brother Paschall has outlined some (by no means all) of the more egregious abuses of process committed by Mr. Riffin both before the board and before the courts in his campaign to be declared a railroad. What is especially significant here are the transcript of the voice mail from Mr. Riffin to Mr. Paschall and the sworn statement from Stanley Stein, Assistant City Manager in Norfolk.

Were Mr. Riffin a licensed attorney-at-law the transcribed voice mail alone would be sufficient to sustain a charge of Barratry before most disciplinary tribunals. The Statement from Mr. Stein supports this and goes a step farther. Stating that he has no actual interest in the proceeding and will accept a “settlement” to go away certainly appears to cross the line to extortion. I can only commend Brother Paschall for having the patience (no doubt sorely tried by dealing with Mr. Riffin) to turn the criminal aspect over to the governmental agencies and not doing what I believe he (as the attorney for Norfolk Southern) has the legal authority to do, and which I might well have done, which would be, acting under the general authority to protect the company from criminal activity, to have applied for a warrant and upon its issuance dispatched two Special Agents to Cockeysville to arrange for Mr. Riffin’s incarceration and extradition to Norfolk.

GME

(Who would welcome further elaboration by Brother Paschall on the definition of "reported unbusinesslike appearance" as used on Page 12.)

I'm no more a lawyer than Riffin, but I wonder if the STB might think that the City of Norfolk's plan is similar to an Offer of Financial Assistance, since it will preserve and reactivate passenger service on the line, and seems to be backed with real money!

Sounds like Mr. Riffin is a candidate for St. Elizabeths's in DC, but Mr. Paschall erred re: the Baltimore Streetcar Museum. The railroad abandoning that trackage in 1958 was the Maryland and Pennsylvania. When I worked for the PRR in Baltimore in 1965-66, the state highway department used the Ma & Pa Roundhouse to store snowplows and salt spreaders.

The City of Baltimore, not the State of Maryland, still uses the old Ma & Pa roundhouse in Baltimore for salt and snowplow storage. -- Ray

Actually he did not err. The track in question has been abandoned for well over half a century. Mr. Riffin's filing was for a line which connected with CSX (B&O) at the top of the hill, came down past the front of the roundhouse, onto the Museum’s Right-of-way, and then reversed direction to pass the freight house, the old passenger station and ultimately connect with Norfolk Southern by going through an Amtrak owned building. To get from the bottom of the hill to Amtrak the options were the museum trackage, down the middle of the road, or down the old interchange track, which is now a trail. The application was some what vague about the details and, at least if viewed from Mr. Riffin’s probable perspective, is all other people’s property. Of course a minor detail such as that has never seemed to bother him. Since he has to cross or possibly use Museum ROW to fulfill that particular fantasy the museum is a party to the petition to revoke.

GME