From the other thread. I don't think their year's activities thread should be contaminated with this kind of political discussion. Yes that's a call to the mods.


Nah, I think they're OK on that one. Judges totally get that TRO's are done hastily and may later prove to be patently unreasonable. The point is to install the protection FAST and sort out the details later.


On this I disagree too. The D.A. doesn't decide what a crime is. It's a crime if the facts match a criminal law. Doesn't matter if it can't be proven. It doesn't matter if it has not been prosecuted. It doesn't matter if it won't be prosecuted because of corruption. In other words, the perfect crime is a crime, and rape is rape even if the DA's brother does it. To say otherwise is to summon Nixon: "When I do it, that MAKES it legal."

Now as far as libel, truth is a defense in the U.S. (not in other countries.) If it's true, it's not libel. Libel is a tort and the standard is "preponderance of the evidence" and they must show it's more likely than not that you libeled them. If you can show it's likely that the statement is true, you're good as gold.

That said -- I agree it's not very good P.R. Obviously that "press release" is someone's e-peen rather than properly spun P.R. They need to hire an agency.


No volunteers are total angels, though the boys at WRM try real hard. I'm not a fan of their corporate structure, but whatever works for them I suppose. As far as "1 mile of track per year", does their contract have a "hell or high water" clause? I bet it doesn't, in which case the superstorms may give them a passive waiver, by way of impracticability, impossibility or perhaps frustration of purpose. I'm sure an argument could be made in there somewhere. Didn't they get nailed just west of where the coaches are? I see an oxbow lake, but did that get undermined?


Well, it's happened before where one or two toxic people / makers of psychodrama who go around pissing off everyone and bringing "aggro" upon the organization. That is disgraceful, it is waving ones ego around at the expense of the organization, and the moral thing for them to do is resign and step away. But that's not what toxic people do, and they must either be forcibly removed, or consent to some sort of structural smoke and mirrors that makes it look like they're no longer in command. When that happens, the relationships usually heal.

I half wonder if the trail thing is actually a cover story and the underlying motivation is personalities.

The term volunteer gets really tricky here. CMRR is a for profit corporation leasing the railroad from the county. The people who "work" for it do not receive a paycheck, however if they work a certain number of hours they are entitled to receive stock (sometimes the right to purchase, other times it is awarded to them). Granted the stock may not be worth much and I am sure most of the volunteers aren't doing it for that reason but technically they are being compensated.

neet idea, but nobody leaves a vehicle on the tracks. On any other railroad it would have been splinters.

get it off the track any way possible.

It would be great to know why railroads in this and similar situations seem to be so easily, well, railroaded in the media and by politicians.

Rail-trails are hit and miss propositions at best - the Silver Comet Trail here in Atlanta is reasonably well used, but of course it's in the middle of a large metro area and the rails had been abandoned for 20 years at the time the trail was built, so it's not like it was on an active and potentially expanding corridor of active rail.

The rail-trail folks are able to get away with pulling numbers out of the sky for any potential rail-trail and it doesn't seem like the railroad has a strong rebuttal - or at the least is not being given a proper hearing by those with a mouthpiece. One only has to see the references to 'dilapidated', 'deteriorating' and so on to get an idea of the general opinion held in that area, echoed by the local media.

It would be nice if the most vocal opponents of railroads (and tourist railroads in particular) would go down and actually spend some time with the volunteers and see how much time and effort they put in. Maybe they would come away with a little less bile in their hearts.

If you analyze recent TEA-21 awards in the Northeast for the last several years, a good portion of the funding was awarded to rails to trails (Poughkeepsie Bridge comes to mind). It is now almost impossible to restore railroad equipment in the region using these funds and their successor, MAP-21. I'm sure that hasn't gone unnoticed by the Ulster County Executive and the Mayor of Kingston, and would only be too happy to apply for the funds after removing CMRR.

As I said in an earlier post, its the back story where the truth lies. I also said CMRR should choose a spokesperson to avoid the quoted comments made by the CMRR President who intimated a "pay to play" scheme by the Mayor. In addition to looking foolish, unless CMRR has sound evidence supporting the claim, credibility will be lost to the public who might have supported them.

I was going to suggest asymmetrical warfare in the form of digging up dirt on the mayor and whoever his deep-pocket trail-loving cronies are, but it looks like that's taking care of itself:

http://www.dailyfreeman.com/articles/20 ... 129527.txt

There's a sound reason for the often heard old saying " you can't fight city hall".

Seems to me that the very dedicated folks at the CMRR need to do all possible to find a way to work with, not against the Mayor and get the City of Kingston behind their efforts. It will no doubt take a lot of patience, lip biting and ego burying but its the only way to go.

I've written a short polite letter to the Mayor supporting the railroad and promoting the tourism value of it to the city and would ask you to do the same.

His name is Shane Gallo and his email is edifalco@kingston-ny.gov

Thanks, Ross Rowland

Edi Falco? As in Mrs. Soprano? ;-)

Ross,

I have discussed rail preservation with a prior mayor of Kingston when the city demolished an historic trolley barn in 2004. Suffice it to say, there wasn't much love for rail history from him, either.

The biggest political problem here is money. The trail activists have friends in Albany and across NY State there is a very serious lobbying effort to remove scores of miles of railroad track to make way for trails.

The trail lobby has had a significant negative impact upon the rail infrastructure of New Hampshire and (to a lesser extent, Vermont). NY is the next area of attack. This is an organized and funded anti-rail effort.

Rob

I think the trail lobby is a big anti-rail effort nationwide, not just in the Northeast. In their early days they used to get a lot of funding from trucking companies and truck lobbying groups. That faded in the last 10 years, replaced by groups working to re-regulate the rail industry along with anti-coal groups. Know the enemy and fight them with knowledge. They still like to use the line "if a need ever arises the right of way can be converted back to a railroad" knowing they will throw up every possible roadblock if an attempt is made to restore the railroad.

Has this ever actually happened, where a rail trail was converted back to railroad use?

For those wondering about the veracity of the e-mail, edifalco@kingston-ny.gov, that is the Mayor's secretary, Ellen DiFalco. You can address mail to MayorGallo@kingston-ny.gov, but the secretary will see it first anyway.

Not to my knowledge, ever.

I can't remember where I saw this within the last few days, but I believe the number was something like nine times out of 301 'railbanked' ROWs.

Lee,

It has happened in north central Pennsylvania. The link below is to an article from the time the decision was made.

http://www.centredaily.com/2012/05/22/3203995/railroad-company-gets-ok-to-reclaim.html

Rob

Whooee, shades of the National City Lines case! And a serious thing to consider if it's true. Is there any sort of documentation or even circumstantial evidence to back this up?

Rob and Steamtown aren't the only ones to cast a jaundiced eye at the rails-to-trails crowd, as noted by this fellow who is more into modern rail service than preservation:

http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress ... rail-scam/