The “trail advocates” still aren’t happy - they want it all gone.
At this point, it comes down to money and political influence. The railroad lacks both. Legal challenges are expensive and what money the railroad does have is better spent on maintenance and upgrades of the equipment. Most of the last legal challenge (which was successful) was paid for through donations.
It’s clear that the “trail advocates” have the governor’s ear - and it’s said that nothing happens in NY State unless it comes from the governor’s office.
Unless someone has, say, $100 million to put into rehabbing the corridor, it sounds like this will be the solution for now, and once the tracks come up, they’ll never go back down again - there are plenty of groups who will ensure that.
While the snowmobilers and hikers may be rejoicing, I would opine that they will soon be cursing - their much coveted trail will never happen. There are groups waiting in the wings to ensure that, too.
The new, and more important than it looks, twist is that all the ‘material’ lifted from Tupper Lake to Lake Placid will be available for rehab of the Remsen-Tupper route. The ARTA lie about ‘scrap will pay for the trail’ is gone.
We will certainly see who and what comes out of the woodwork once the first rail is lifted. As I said on RyPN, I hope their present ‘transit corridor’ definition holds up better than its predecessor…
My uhderstanding, from previous postings and threads, is it can be used for extremely slow equipment moves and for actual movement of people by track-speeder. Needs a lot of work. Not sure if conditions have worsened.
The out-of-service track has a speed limit of 10 MPH, and that often with a certain amount of caution…
It’s good enough to ferry the equipment when necessary.
That said, what’s needed all through that section is ties - probably 2000 per mile, and in some areas a considerable amount of stone ballast, as the cinders that still exist in some sections are getting tired…
Forty, actually, although the section from Otter Lake to Thendara needs surfacing to get it back up there. We have one section good for 45.
Getting a round trip out of one crew would be a concern - forty would easily allow that. The Central ran the line at fifty, as evidenced by the superelevation in some curves.
The scenery along the line is great, but running through at at 45 wouldn’t detract from that.
It takes us one hour to Remsen on the shortline. Not likely we can improve on that.
Remsen to Tupper is 84 miles, or a little over two hours averaging 40. Factoring in a station stop in Thendara and any possible slow orders would bring that to three hours, for a total four hour trip one way. Give an hour to “turn” the train (move the motive power to the other end of the train) and we’ve still got an nine hour trip. Crews can only work 12 hours.
It might be desirable to hold longer in Tupper if suitable activities can be arranged, like a trip to the Wild Center.
Losing the 34 miles between Tupper and Lake Placid denies riders the opportunity to travel to Lake Placid - more of a “name” destination" than Tupper Lake.</
Can’t say as I know, but I would suspect that at this point it’s a matter of we’ll take what we can get. Keep in mind that the “trail advocates” still want the rails gone all the way to Remsen. If we can get trains to Tupper Lake we should see the potential for the line and make it that much harder for the rail foes to advocate for further removals.
Business at the north end was steady, but on a par with the south end and Thendara.
I’m quite sure we could do a good business going all the way to Lake Placid, and I’m hopeful that having a less-famous terminus won’t hurt that too badly.
During the summer of 1980 the Adirondack Railway (operator of the trains for the Olympics) logged 16,000 boardings with nothing to go on but a trip from Utica to Lake Placid. I’m sure that number could be duplicated today.
In fact, I’d opine that if it were not for reported management issues (some of which led to safety issues), ASRR wouldn’t exist today, as the Adirondack Railway would still be running.
The Saranac-Lake Placid section was already in operation and in a relativly built up area for the Adirondacks. The Tupper-Big Moose section is out of service and in relative wilderness. The trail and wilderness advocates are just getting started. New York will just see the outcry against rehabing that section, and will use that as an excuse to not spend the money. Look what is happening to the Tahawas-Saratoga line.
My post a year ago should have indicated that ARTA is not going to ultimately try to ‘get everyone out of our woods.’ No matter how many times that is said doesn’t make it true.
There was no group that “fought” the restoration for the 1980 Olympics. The Adirondack Railway thought they could restore the tracks for much less that the original estimates, but ultimately they ended up with an unsafe railroad that was shut down half-way through the summer. And it was not a major part of transportation for the Olympics. The Lake Placid Olympic Museum (which has no stake in this debate) estimates 450,000 people came through Lake Placid during those two weeks. The railroad carried 4,500 according the the manager at the time.
The tracks north of Big Moose can no longer carry even an equipment move. In fact, last season the NYS DOT had to come in and fix some washouts so that snowmobiles could traverse the corridor. The snowmobilers are well aware of the problems, but have been told by DOT that they are not allowed on the corridor until December 1 when their seasonal contract starts. NYS DOT says that the ASR is the only “contractor” authorized to work on the corridor. Except that ASR isn’t working on it even though they will suposedly one day be able to again run trains to Tupper Lake.
Tree 68 has confirmed that it would be about four hours to get from Utica to Tupper Lake. Add another 1-1/2 hours (including stops at Lake Clear and Saranac Lake) to get to Lake Placid, making it a 5-1/2 hour trip. Now getting to Utica by rail takes four hours from NYC and two hours from Albany making for a 7-1/2 -9-1/2 hour trip to Lake Placid. Drive time is five hours and two hours respectively from those locations. Given that most visits to Lake Placid are 2, 3 or 4-day “getaways”, spending the better part of a day each way on the train is just not a service that many would ever even con
I think the railroad has a good case. Real restoration of both freight and passenger service to Saranak Lake and Lake Placid would be of greater benefit than any scenic trail, which would both benefit far fewer people and also make for additional danger of litter and even fire. But the railroad has to get its act together. Is it currently a common carrier or just a tourist railroad? If the latter it has to secure funding and make all the necessary moves to become a common carrier, with definite plans to develop a transloading facility and even an intermodal terminal to serve the Lake Placid - Saranac Lake area on land it owns. It will then have a case for being part of the nationwide freight network, even with its own operations confined to New York State. In that case, ripping up the tracks can be shown to be against the national interest, and the STB can intervene.
The Adirondack Scenic Railroad owns zero track. The entire ROW (except the Mohawk, Adirondack & Northern - a short line) is owned and controlled by New York State, with the Scenic as the operator.
The Scenic gets to run trains in the summer. In the winter it’s a snowmobile trail.
As such, the Adirondack’s operations are subject to political whim. Given the pushback IP has seen with the Saratoga & North Creek, I seriously doubt that freight operations are a realistic option, no matter who the operator (which would likely be MHWA).
In other words, there are no businesses in the combined commounities of Sadanac Lake and Lake Placid that would benefit from rail freight service or there are too few and no possibilities for increzase?
Development is tightly controlled in the Adirondack Park. They’ve been trying to get a resort off the ground in Tupper Lake for a number of years and have experienced significant pushback.
I heard of a fellow who caught grief for the color of his steel roof (red) even though it could only be seen from the air, and then just barely.
The railroad is limited to cutting fallen trees back to clear the ROW. After the derecho of 1995 there was a lot of lumber blown down to the ground. Loggers were not allowed to pull it from the forest, where it lays to this day, rotting away.
Any new industry that requires rail service will likely see similar pushback.
Any need for rail freight would be limited to those consumers/industries already extant, and aside from fuel, there wouldn’t much call for rail service quantities.
Lumbering isn’t the major industry it once was. There were numerous businesses and institutions that got coal - that’s gone. Even fuel now arrives in 9,000 gallon tanker trucks, minimizing the need for railroad tank car quantities.
Mention of the Saratoga and North Creek is instructive. They wanted to haul out tailings from Tahawas mine, which would probably have made it easier to reclaim that mine. Still the forever wild people wanted none of it. CP killed the project because apparently they didn’t think the Saratoga-Albany short haul was worth it. They started to store oil tank cars to get some income for that unused track which really upset the locals. Snowmobilers were not happy that snow trains precluded their use of the ROW.
What is new is that the state will be prioritizing restoration of the track to Tupper Lake, and from what I understand using the entire ‘product’ of track lifting to help restore and maintain the whole of the route the ASR operates over. No longer is that ARTA-promoted scam about ‘the trail will pay for itself out of the scrap value’ in play … which I think is a good thing for both the rail and trail proponents in the long run.
If I recall correctly, Tupper Lake is strong on having active train service (they expensively renovated their ‘station facility’ a decade ago) while Saranac Lake is right up there with Tenafly in the ‘couldn’t care less’ category. So having Tupper and their new ‘gaming attractions’ or whatever be a logical endpoint for ASR-style service makes good sense, whereas giving communities further north ‘access to the general system of transportation’ when they already see insular service as an intrusion is… not something their democracy is going to particularly value. (Tupper signed one of those suspiciously-similarly-worded town resolutions to have the trail … but they are in the position of having both EOT for the rail attraction and the trailhead.)
When the forever-wilders come out of the woodwork to interrupt the trail conversion, we’ll see how much crawfishing to restore rail service results, but frankly I’ll settle for assured high quality service to Tupper Lake in the meantime.
INCIDENTALLY: isn’t it interesting you haven’t seen anything about Bill Branson saying he was misquoted in that article?
He says this … via link to the NYCSHS Web site Nov 23, or I wouldn’t have known, even from RyPN:
What’s “a-buildin’ in Tupper Lake”? From what I hear the original developer owes $millions, and the guy trying to buy him out also is in debt in the $millions.