NAUGY is short for Naugatuck Railroad, operated by the Railroad Museum of New England, based in Thomaston Ct. www.rmne.org

with all kinds of tractors, trailers hanging about, whats a boxcar anyways..and a big farm, who would notice or care..8-P, it's only temporary, our buddy is going to restore it and its gone. Lets givem the big pat on the back.

As someone who lives about 30-40 minutes from Woodstock, it may be full of farms, but there's a lot of Horse-riding Boston Suburbanites and Gentleman/Gentlewomen Farmers in the area. The same thing has happened to Fairfield County (SW Connecticut, diagonally opposite corner of the state) but Manhattan-ite flavored. Unfortunately I escaped the Manhattan-ites and ran into the Boston-ites, luckily I am (and have been) at the most diluted end of their suburban expansions.

The Annual Woodstock Agricultural fair is now about 80% carnival with a little wash of farming here and there. Luckily the fair held the weekend before Woodstock has kept it's country charm. Lots of multi-generational Yankee Farmers in Brooklyn, Ct & Windham county (which is the oldest continuously operating fair in the USA) .

I wish the fellow luck. I know how hard it is to deal with this type of NYMBY.

Rich C.

P.S., Slightly off-topic yet related, back in the 70's a condo development was built about a mile from a sheep farm in Brookfield Ct. Shortly after people started to move in, they complained about the smell coming from the farm up the road (1 family owned since before or around the revolutionary war). From what I have been told, at the town meeting to discuss the problem, the old yankee farmer (~60 years old) stated, `You passed by my farm when you checked out your home, you drive by it when you signed the papers, and drove passed it when you moved in, some of yah stopped and oohed and aahhed at them. The farm has been here for almost 200 years and if you don't like the smell of sheep, fine, I'll sell them,... but I will immediately replace them with pigs.'

If you thought a wool jacket has an annoying odor when wet, wait till you smell an active pig farm...

Good news. The kid's permit was unanimously approved by the board.

http://www.courant.com/community/woodst ... story.html

Best of luck to his endeavors. I see him going far.

The good guys win again...

Aaannnnd,

The grumpy folks are going to appeal to State Superior Court. Paying an attorney to do so. They strike me as the types who will spend whatever it takes for them to win here: $100K if necessary.

Grumpy old guy made a point of telling me about his vintage cars (3) that he had had restored: 1 Bentley and 2 Rolls-Royces, 1925-34 vintage. And that there was no lead paint on them.

Howard P.

jealous or sumpthin? "you cant do that!" good luck trying the supreme court, they would throw it out, and in all the time taken to deal with court delays and schedules this kid woulda restored the car and have it moved out.

What's a court going to do? They're going to look at the fact that the town shut them down on their appeal, realize these people didn't do anything BEFORE the car got moved into town, and they're going to pick apart their arguments (because they couldn't come up with anything substantive) like I did over on Facebook. And that's assuming that a judge doesn't laugh at them and throw their appeal in the trash...

It appears that the appellant's main line of attack is that the structure contains lead paint. It has been documented that it does not. Even if it did, how would it be different than all the other pre late 1970s structures in Woodstock?

It also seems like approval from the Zoning Board was based on the classification of the box car as a temporary storage structure. As long as Orion continues his work and documents it, he'll have a strong case to support this classification if the appellants base their appeal in whole or in part on the classification of the structure as temporary.

Another possible way for Orion to buttress his assertion that the location of the car on his property is temporary would be to line up a recipient for the completed car and enter into a donor agreement for his donation of the car upon completion of the restoration.

All this should be unnecessary in that the car is temporary in nature since it has no permanent foundation or footing.

In my limited experience with zoning boards, the hurdle the appellant will have to overcome is great. Zoning decisions are often viewed through a "home rule" lens and the standard for reversal often requires that the appellant prove that the Zoning Board's decision was arbitrary and capricious.

If the appellant is serious about getting that box car out of their neighboring property in a timely manner, their best route to facilitate quick removal is to donate the money they plan to pay their lawyer to Orion so he can make quick work of it.

If he's got the money to restore those classic cars, he's got the money for the lawyers, unfortunately.

I keep thinking this is yet another part of our culture that stinks. . . the view that trains are from the past and should stay there. I think that's a lot of what drives the anti-rail sentiment in New York (Catskill Mountain and Adirondack Scenic, to name just two), and I know it drives a lot of opposition to expanding rail passenger services around the country.

Our country suffers from a case of ABR--Anything But Rail. (courtesy of Bill Hutchison, whom I think coined that.)

Hi,



Oddly enough, the lady made an illogical leap of faith by wanting "trained technicians" to restore the car. I guess the volunteers that restore rolling stock in museums are "trained technicians"?

Doug vV

I think one driver of the ABR attitude is that the railroads have spent a generation driving the public away from rail. Outside the northeast hardly anybody rides the train. Our local light rail moves a lot of people but only makes the news when it breaks down or hits a car. A lot of people hate it because it (A) doesn't run from their house to their job and (B) is full of "those" people. In short a huge number of people only see rail as a noisy traffic hazard that does nothing for them.

Appellant has restored classic cars so a lack of appreciation for things from the past is an unlikely motivator. Perhaps a more accurate assessment is found by taking the advice of my high school American History teacher who counseled us to always follow the money. Given the age demographic of the appellant, I would surmise that liquidation of their real property in Woodstock is an integral part of their downsizing plan which they intend to execute within the time frame of Orion's restoration, that is within the next three to five years. They likely see the presence of the box car as a detriment to their property value and so they want to see it gone before they put their property on the market.

Perhaps this neighbor would be willing to make a tax-deductible donation to have the car moved. ;-)

Appreciation of the past and "Anything But Rail" are not mutually exclusive. People can be appreciative of the past but think a railroad, even a heritage road in a proper setting, is a blight. Something along these lines is recounted in "Allies of the Earth: Railroads and the Soul of Preservation" by Alfred Runte, who recalls that the National Park Service originally was cool to the idea of "industrial" steam trains returning to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Although the equipment would not be quite authentic (not from the ATSF), it would otherwise be quite authentic in overall style (black steam engines and green passenger cars) in a setting as appropriate and accurate as one could ask for.

Much of this seems to be connected with generational attitudes. There is a block of the population, born primarily between about 1930 and 1953 and coming of age between 1950 and 1973 (first OPEC oil embargo) who grew up when cars were ascendant and trains were supposed to go away. I've seen it first hand, and others in endeavors such as modern light rail lines and the California high speed rail project have also observed it.

Having said that, the money issue is also a possibility; perhaps both are "concerns" of the parties who hold them.