Ah, those golden tones. You’d think I’d done radio before, or something… [8D]
too bad the catskill mountain railroad got hosed so bad by the lawsuit. guess the trail nutjobs got what they wanted. will the catskill mountain have any track left to operate any excursion trains, or is it a dead line? nice going trail people.
Even though i live in michigan, I and my wife are praying that the Adirondack Scenic Railroad is successfull in keeping that 34 miles of track in place for further use. Same the trail nuts are so anti rail as does the state’s current governor. hope support for Adirondack continues to grow.
The Adirondack Railway (for the Olympics) of 1979 and 1980 didn’t haul as many people as the Central did in 1932. It was chiefly the fear of total gridlock in the Lake Placid for the 1980 event that brought it about in the first place.
That said, the summer following the Olympics - June through the end of operations in August - saw some 16,000 people ride the rails to Lake Placid from Utica. Even if those riders were counted as two boardings, that’s still 8,000 passengers - not a number to sneeze at, and higher than the Stone study counted.
There were two round trips per day, and each saw about 100 passengers aboard, according to folks I know whe were there.
From what I’ve heard, it was some questionable management that lead to the safety issues that brought that operation to an end. I would suspect that had that iteration been well run, today’s Adirondack Scenic Railroad would not exist, as tourist service might well have continued to this day.
I don’t know what numbers the Stone Study showed. However, the numbers you gave do not come close to agreement.
First number: 16,000, maybe 8,000.
Second set: (2 RT daily = 4); 4 x 92 days x 100 = 36,800. Now that is a very large number, but so far from the others as to prove again how unreliable eyewitnesses’ memories are 36 years later, unless it is the boardings vs passenger metric again.
Slightly off-topic, but the acting Commissioner of Environmental Conservation, who signed the execution order, might could possibly personally ride 34 miles of new bikeway.
I don’t have my copy of the ridership handy, and don’t recall the specific period it covers. And I do have to rely on the recall of the folks who were there 35 years ago, so the specifics there are iffy.
The 16,000 number is solid, though, and is on file with state DOT. As you note, I don’t know how it was arrived at, ie, if that was boardings vs actual bodies. And service ended, rather abruptly, in mid-August. It’s hard to say how things would have turned out had they continued through fall, when the “leaf peepers” would likely have resulted in sold-out trains.
As I recall, the Stone study (the current study) conservatively estimated 7,000 riders.
The bottom line here is that historically people will ride the railroad all the way from Utica to Lake Placid.
Another thing the “trail advocates” like to point out is that commercial passenger service ended in 1965, which it did. To compare common carrier passenger service (in 1965) with tourist service (in 2016), however, is ludicrous - apple and oranges.
CMR was kicked out of the Kingston end. They still have about 6 miles in Phoenicia and eastward. They wanted to move their Kingston equipment to Phoenicia, but now the Phoenicia locals are trying to stop any further expansion there. The County also leases this track to CMR, and can someday evict them from here too.
So looks like the 16,000 ridership (actual bodies) number
In terms of saving the “north end,” that’s questionable - the powers that be have shown a marked propensity to ignore such facts, as well as public opinion in favor of the railroad. by all indications, all the posturing that’s gone on over the past few years has been mostly cosmetic - it appears the decision along this line may have been pre-ordained at the outset.
The railroad has said that they will work with whatever is left, so we can hope that riders will still want to go to Tupper Lake in significant numbers.
They say that bad news comes in threes. A third NY mountain scenic railroad operation may be threatened. The Saratoga & North Creek announced (last year) that they lost a million $ the year before last, and so they cut back service last year. They also brought up the idea of a subsidy from the County that owned the track. A local newspaper article about this on their website got about 2 dozen comments, all very negative.
Part of the ‘secret’ is that some big casino or similar tourist attraction is being provided in Tupper Lake, and that’s part of the reason for extending service there. I’m interested in seeing just how much additional traffic this generates, and how the ASR promotes it.
Excerpt from Adirondack Almanack, Jan. 31
http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2017/01/lawyers-debate-court-rail-trail-proposal.html#comments
After months of delay, lawyers for the state and the Adirondack Railway Preservation Society squared off in court Monday over the future of a 34-mile stretch of tracks between Lake Placid and Tupper Lake.
At the end of the 45-minute hearing in Malone, acting State Supreme Court Justice Robert G. Main Jr. reserved decision on whether to block the state from tearing up the tracks and converting the corridor into a multi-use recreational trail.
The judge also asked the state to provide more information on the ownership of the railroad corridor…
Assistant State Attorney General Marie Chery-Seckhobo told Justice Main the landowners have agreed to let the state use their pieces of the corridor for the recreational trail and signed letters of intent to that effect.
Nevertheless, Main expressed concern that the state’s existing right of way on the parcels may not allow for uses other than a railroad. If the right of way does not allow a recreational trail, he asked, “isn’t the proposal doomed to failure?”<
The railroad is “cautiously optomistic.”
Seven postponements haven’t helped the state’s case any.
The “trail advocates” will likely appeal immediately (cost is no object) if the judge rules for the railroad.
The “trail advocates” still want the rails lifted all the way back to Thendara. Win or lose, their campaign is far from done. They continue to want everyone out of “their” woods…
If the Judge were to state something in his ruling for the RR that - 'the trail advocates don’t OWN the woods and their opposition is ‘trivial’ - would that bolster the RR’s long term position?
I suspect anything that takes the wind out of their sails - ie, dismissing all or part of the concept of the trail, even “you’re wasting our time” - would certainly benefit the railroad in the long term. I doubt that he can prohibit any further trail campaigns, but suggesting that they are wasting their time would certainly put a dent in their efforts.
My phrase “out of ‘their’ woods” is a nod to those folks who seem to feel that their view for the Adirondack forest is the only one worth considering. In fact, the state owns very significant portions of the Adirondack Park.
The hearing lasted about 45 minutes, and the judge asked for more information from the state. Depending on how long that takes, we’ll just have to wait patiently.
I hope you win, Larry. A real trail could be somewhere else in the forest.