Interesting that the cost of taking up the track and making a trail cost 40 percent more than a major upgrade (to Class III standards) of the railroad.

I would think that with fuel prices likely to continue rising, that these communities would not want to take out infrastructure and rely on a petroleum dependent form of tourism.

Wish the Adirondack Scenic good luck on this.

Michael Seitz
Missoula MT

They will need to be more vocal than the snowmobilers, and that is a huge challenge. I hope they are successful.

Of course the third option is a snowmobile trail along the fenceline, with rails being used for their intended purpose. Snowmobile trails don't need to be fancy.

Steve Hunter

No, a snowmobile trail doesn't, but I notice that there is a trail "industry" rather like highway construction, and costs spiral up fairly quickly--plus you still have to deal with washouts and bridges.

Notice there are no private operated trail systems?

Michael Seitz
Missoula MT

See also here: http://www.adkaction.org/

The railroad looks like this. (mileage)

Utica<----50---->Thendara <-----65-----> Tupper Lake <--20--> Lake Clear <-7-> Saranac Lake <-10-> Lake Placid

The Adriondack Railway Preservation Society operates 2 sections:
1. Utica-Thendara (50 mi.)
2. Saranac Lake to Lake Placid (10 mi.)

The proposal is to destroy from Tupper Lake to Lake Placid, killing the train that operates there. The alternative is to extend the train over that distance.

I believe the study was either poorly done or is rigged to favor the bike trail.

1. Rail+trail was artfully dodged.

2. "Temporary rail removal" is a throwaway option which presumes the rails could be relaid for $0 cost.

3. Reality can never compete with fantasy. Yet they give imaginary pie-in-the-sky trail user numbers equal weight with real-world proven passenger numbers.

4. FRA Class III (60 mph) is absolutely useless to a tourist line. Worse than useless as it triggers additional FRA regulation. If they lowered the cost to FRA II and accounted for volunteer labor, the train would be far more competitiive.

5. They treat RAIL voluntarism as equal to TRAIL voluntarism. No. There has to be a "prime contractor" to be bottom line responsible for performance. The railroad has already developed its volunteer MoW capability and they can handle much of the capital work. That's not going to exist with the trail.



By THEIR numbers*, the additional cost for the scrap/trail scenario is $4M, and would net $400k/year of "economic benefit" in their wildest dreams.

Put that same $4M into an endowment. Draw it off at 7% per year, or $280k/year. That's REAL money and spending decisions are made by YOU, not some imaginary tourist.

* Volunteer MoW could significantly favor the rail scenario, by $2M at least. Put that in the endowment and now it's $6M/$420k/year. Rail wins.

I have something to say about this, but first, if you haven't done so, please check out the article, and especially the posted comments with it.

Ok, you're back.

Part of what we are looking at here, in my opinion, is a consistent problem faced by the railroad preservation community, indeed by rail advocates in both cases of preservation and of those who see the need for rail in a future that will be defined by (take your pick) either worsening traffic congestion if we are still able to drive (electric or other power) cars or if we will not be able to drive because of the problem of peak oil. In short, we are like the late Rodney Dangerfield of "I don't get no respect!" fame.

This is not new.

John White mentions in his book, "The American Railroad Freight Car," that he was at some sort of function for the Smithsonian, and some matron of the arts asked which art museum he was involved with. When he told here that he was with the Museum of History and Technology, and that he was just finishing up his manuscript on the history of American freight cars, she exclaimed, "They don't really make you do that, do they?"

Check out the comments again; we have people accusing us of wanting a giant Lionel set, or playing with "choo-choos." Those same derogitory marks come against you if you want to promote a modern light rail line, or more Amtrak service, or really modern high-speed service.

You have it in California (anti-high speed line project), you have it in South Bend, Indiana (the NIMBYs against that Notre Dame spur project), some noise from others have caused problems for the Western Maryland Scenic and the New Hope & Ivyland, there was past criticism against Mount Washington Cog (although this does not seem to be what was driving the recent conversion to diesel power on that line), the complaints about the Durango & Silverton, and I faced it myself trying to promote a light rail line as an alternative to a 4-lane highway in my area (for which I was called a Communist, and other things that should not be repeated on a family-friendly forum).

We even have it in our own industry; think of the hostility--not concern, but hostility--that goes beyond worries about lawsuits and accidents if you try to run an excursion today on almost any main line carrier, even if you have an outstanding safety and mechanical record. No doubt the readers and posters here can think up more examples.

About the only positive aspect I can perceive is that much of this opposition and ridicule seems to be generational in nature. Basically, the bulk of people who dislike us and railroads so seem to be currently between the ages of 60 and 90 years old; they would have been born between the late 1920s to the early to mid 1950s, and would have come of age between about 1950 and the first oil crunch of 1973. This generation was described by one poster as the generation that "drank the Tang" in the thread, "Generations (Steam, NIMBYs, and the future)." They think we are part of the past that is dead and buried, and should stay that way.

This antipathy does not seem to be present in those who are older (best guess--they remember what we had and are sorry we let it go), nor is it so strong in the younger crowd (a mixture, in my opinion, of taking cars for granted, of being ecologically aware, of driving not being special because "my grandma drives," and of fear, too many teens having seen friends die in car wrecks). This was obvious to me about 20 years ago when I was promoting that light rail line (and the age breaks then were about at 40 and 70), has reportedly been measured by Amtrak, and has also been observed by people in Chicago and California promoting Amtrak and high speed services in those places respectively.

The question is, what can we do about this? As noted in this Adirondack Railroad article, we may not have the time to wait for the oil supply to dry up and/or the "drank the Tang" generation to die off, yet I am at a loss as to what we can do.

It has to be discouraging as can be for the Adriondack volunteers to read this in their local paper.

Does anybody have any ideas?

For the Adirondack people, it's fairly easy, but will take some brass.

1. Write your OWN plan as a response to theirs. Consider 2 options: a "Rails" plan with CORRECTED values. And a "rails+trails" plan which closes key gaps in the trail networks. Their "Rails" plan assumes $7.68M, of which $5.1M is ties and surfacing, plus 38% for overruns/admin. You can cut that to shreds with volunteer labor instead of admin/overruns. Do 1/20 mile in town just to prove the point.

2. While the snowmobilers are waiting for $14M of magic G-money, figure out how to implement Scenario 1 without it.

We have successful models of rail/trail sharing in at least two places I know of off the top of my head - the WMSR, and in Ohio, the Panhandle hike/bike trail around Newark, OH. In addition to those examples, the CVSR has had great success with it's "Bike Aboard" promotion, taking advantage of the paralleling canal towpath hike/bike trail in the Cuyahoga Valley to give bicyclists a chance to ride one-way on the trail and get back to their cars on the train. I can't give exact numbers, but bike haulage on the train is in the thousands each year. It's been so successful that loading and unloading bikes on the dedicated baggage car sometimes causes the train to be as much as an hour late by the end of the day some peak season weekends. Just do a little on-line research and see if you can find downloadable photos of these examples to use at any further hearings.

I had a chance to ride and photograph the ASRR in the mid-90's, and enjoyed the experience and wish them luck.

One of the oldest rail+trails I know is between Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti on the MC/Amtrak. US-23 goes right over it.
Been there at least 20 years.
http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&hl=en&i ... 10235&z=16

Although rails to trails preserves a lot of rightoway, you wish you could try to promote getting the line back in operation than for just whoppee bikings and snowmobiling. I suddenly started getting spam emails about some rail-to-trail stuff and emailed them take me off their membership drive. ptooeyt.

Much of the CA&E ROW is still intact gone to the trail thing, if such an interurban line returned, well, the chance is still there.

Not so good on the North Shore as construction creep has taken over a lot of its ROW.