I think RTC is awesome and I was an early member. They preserve right-of-way that will otherwise be encroached by adjacent landowners and 80 foot wide condos. Just follow the old SP line from Pleasanton to Livermore, and you'll see what I mean.

Historically and generally there's been no significant conflict between railways (/preservation) and rail-trails. It seems in recent times they've done such a good job as to become a juggernaut and most convert-able abandoned railroads have been converted, so more and more their eyes are turning to extant railroads.

They're more competent than we are, but they lack what we have: manpower and machinery. So we stand to gain a lot by working together.

The increasing invasion of "government megaprojects" is an entirely different matter. What's up at CMRR is the pursuit of imaginary G-dollars. They want to spend $1.2 million of their town's hard money to bring in an additional $2 million of FedBux, to build a project they would have never, in a million years, built if the only money involved was their $1.2 million. They have bought hook, line and sinker into this "Keynesian multiplier" horsepuckey. They're going to wind up with an overbuilt project which they now need to maintain at county expense, because the money will come with "strings" like the next time the river floods, and half the trail is washed away, they HAVE to fix it because G-money was involved. I'm pretty sure this is what the CMRR guy means when he says "They'll regret it."

They destroyed the Maine Central line from Ellsworth to Calais, even when a private operator was willing to lease and rebuild it for the purpose of hauling sand and gravel. The one caveat is, allegedly, "It can be converted back if the demand ever gets political backing". Right.

I have read all you wrote. You sure have a wide range of perspectives. No surprise.

If I'm negative or say "No" to R to T, nothing changes except that they find other pictures.

So I thought about who is going to benefit here. It's the trail user. The trail is there. It makes absolutely no difference how the trail came about. This is an opportunity to teach the trail user a bit of railroad history. That's a good thing.

So I was positive. Said I'd proof read the text of each piece.

Thanks for kicking this around for me.

[quote="robertmacdowell"]I think RTC is awesome and I was an early member. They preserve right-of-way that will otherwise be encroached by adjacent landowners and 80 foot wide condos. Just follow the old SP line from Pleasanton to Livermore, and you'll see what I mean.

This conversion was done by East Bay Regional Park District with a nice paved bicycle trail. Our tax dollars at work. It was NOT done by RTT.