The [kaff, hack, kaff, kaff] "Iron Horse Railway Preservation Society" has been touted as the way to get a trail built for nothing, with Iron Horse doing so in return for the salvage value of the rail.

That may not actually work too good, based on this information from the Facebook page, "Friends of the Rails-Adirondack Rail Corridor:"

Main Page:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Friends- ... 88?fref=ts

The "exhibits:"

http://www.eagletribune.com/news/salem- ... f30c1.html

https://www.dropbox.com/s/e9xlmo829cgtt ... e.pdf?dl=0

http://www.eagletribune.com/news/new_ha ... dcb77.html

http://www.unionleader.com/article/2015 ... 6/0/news06

http://www.eagletribune.com/news/new_ha ... f2419.html

http://www.eagletribune.com/news/new_ha ... db74a.html

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ppczkww8k0k96 ... n.pdf?dl=0

Iron Horse Railway Preservation Society did win its case with the Town of Salem. The win seems to be based on some technicalities, i.e., the town allegedly not exhausting all possibilities for pursuing a monetary award (the town didn't do so, believing it couldn't get one).

In any event, we do have a "breach of contract," and this for a relatively short trail of less than three miles.

How well would this work out for a trail dozens of miles long, such as the Catskill Mountain? How would it work for a trail over 100 miles long, such as the Adirondack Scenic?

Am I the only one here who feels like they walked in on the tail end of a conversation where you're the only one who didn't catch some of the key elements of what the discussion was about?

For Lee (and likely others), a bit of background:

Iron Horse Railway Preservation Society is a non-profit group that supposedly preserved the rights of ways of railroads by building trails, and has supposedly done so by using the savage value of the rails to build the resulting trail. This firm has been promoted as the way to build trails by the trail backers currently at war with Catskill Mountain and the Adirondack Scenic. However, there is at least this one case where IHRPS has apparently pocketed the proceeds of the rails and there's no trail.

I seem to recall at least one or two other similar incidents involving this entity, though I think the trails involved did eventually get built.

I personally wonder how this firm would manage to do what they say they can do. I've researched the salvage value of rail (for scrap, which would be lower than for relay), and compared with the costs of most trail conversions, you would be lucky to get a quarter of the cost of the trail, and very likely only half of that.

Of course, even if the trails could be built that cheaply, there's still the cost of maintenance; those of us who actually work in this field know something about how big that job is, and how much of it goes to supporting structures, such as ditches, bridges, and vegetation control.

As the old saying goes, if it seems too good to be true, it likely is.

Just something to read:

http://www.unionleader.com/apps/pbcs.dl ... F150519785

At the risk of going slightly off topic, are there any tourist railways/ museums that could play the part of the hero and relieve them of a big part of their burden? Justdon't get stuck with disposal of the dead ties after salvaging any usable ones...

Steve Hunter

I don't mind walking on ties and around rails, leavem in...

sounds a little doublecrossing to me...

Well, some more material is coming up, some of it directly related to Iron Horse Railway Preservation Society, some of it only tangently connected.

http://village14.com/newton-ma/2014/12/ ... z3bUVMyT8m

http://patch.com/massachusetts/sudbury/ ... enway-hoax

https://pedestrianobservations.wordpres ... rail-scam/

Caveat Emptor

Guidestar provides 990s for every tax exempt in the country that files them.

These people aren't listed, but may be a new group or a dba.

I didn't check the IRS site.

Bob H