Here’s a press release put out by the Catskill Mountain Railroad:
As Alderman Tom Hoffay said Friday 4/26/13, “The Mayor has gone mad.”
It is indeed madness to get a Temporary Restraining Order to stop the Catskill Mountain Railroad (CMRR) from moving historic cars off of Route 209 into Kingston. A phone call would have sufficed. By placing a dump truck blocking the CMRR’s tracks, nearly a mile east of the cars, Mayor Gallo committed a class D felony of NYS Railroad Law 53-e : NY Code – Section 53-E: Unlawful interference with a railroad train. As well as breaking the law this was clearly an attempt to shut down the CMRR.
This is what the CMRR has been up against for years, now everyone can see it. Because we make no political contributions to any politician in Kingston or Ulster County, and focus on our job, bringing visitors to Ulster County and Kingston to spend their dollars here, this is the reward we get.
Regardless of your position on rails or trails, this is no way to treat a small business in Kingston or Ulster County. The Ulster County Health Department, under the control of Mike Hein, provided material to assist the city in issuing the Temporary Restraining Order. Rather than having a truly open and reasonable discussion on rail vs. trail, they instead decide to stifle the debate by putting the CMRR out of business. Is this what Ulster County has come to? No wonder businesses and jobs have been leaving the county in droves.
The CMRR has always complied with any requests made by the city and county. By resorting to legal action, it is clear that the goal of the city and county are to put the railroad out of business because we disagree with them and believe that rail and trail can co-exist. Ulster County seems to be an outpost of Russia instead of a part of the United States of America.
Re-read the linked article, and the other article from the local paper that it links to. The railroad need to use the track for maintenence purposes, in order to get ready for tourist season.
What if a person or persons unknown had vandalized the truck to the point where the town had to pay to have it towed and repaired. Wouldn’t that have been a dirty rotten shame? But then maybe they would be more careful where they parked their equipment in the future. Stuff happens.
What we need is for someone to tell us the whole story here. Parking the truck on the track makes no sense whatsoever. What is going on in the big picture? I gather there is a dispute about whether the line should be rehabilitated as a railroad, or made into a trail. But how is it that this seems to have become something that will be settled with a food fight?
I cannot imagine somebody rebuilding a railroad without legal title to do so. And if they have legal title, what is the big threat from the trail advocates?
I read through that, and it gives a lot of operational and strategic details, but not much on the big picture of the current controversy that threatens the railroad. The only thing I can gather is that Catskill Mountain company leased the railroad from the county, and lease is almost up. And it appears that the county meanwhile has come to prefer continued use as a trail rather than as a railroad.
So, I guess the “food fight” is waging a popularity contest between use as a railroad versus use as a trail, with the county picking the winner based on public preference.
LION would (If the LION had trackage rights) run his locomotive (a Steam Engine would be nice) up to the dump truck and then stop. Too bad if that blocks a city road, Everything will just have to wait until the truck goes away.
Judging by the name-calling peppered CMRR news release posted earlier, they have a ways to climb to reach the moral high ground. Maybe they could use a PR makeover.
Guys, this revanchism is amusing in a kind of revenge-of-the-nerds fashion, but …
What part of “lease comes up for renewal in 2016” seems to be escaping you?
Damage to the truck, blocking of the roads, castigation of elected officials – all those things would feel real, real good. Just like telling your boss off publically whenever they make a mistake will feel so, so good. But then comes time to see who’s going to be promoted, or who won’t be furloughed… and guess who’s going to remember certain things then?
Yes, the deck is stacked against the railroad, and apparently has been for some time. Plenty more voters would prefer to snowmobile free of potential surprise than would take advantage (in some fashion not quite described coherently) of the presence of an operating railroad. It’s not about ‘economic benefits to the community’ provided by railroad accountants with sharp #2 pencils and a big piece of brown paper. I’ts about personal opportunity – and that is where the railroad will have to be waging its war, for hearts and minds, if it expects to see its lease renewed, let alone on positive terms.
The ‘correct’ response here would have been for somebody unassociated with the railroad – for example, a Kingston taxpayer concerned about reckless endangerment to City property, or violation of applicable law that might result in waste of his tax dollars, to take pictures and call one of the Federal ‘whistleblower’ sites with a demonstrated statutory violation. And then publicize it strictly on that basis! (In this case, unlike with that goofball Riffin, use of the court and of legal technicality may be justifiable…)
Not difficult to see through the ‘lead based paint’ excuse, and also not difficult to understand that even if the railcars were put in the shop, it would take a host of people needle-gunning like crazy to get any paint off before city authorities put the
On the various forums, there has been a lot of indignant chest thumping over how they dare they interfere with a railroad. But I think the last thing CMRR should do is handle the controversy as a legal matter. They are not a class one railroad with unlimited legal powers, and they would be making a big mistake for them to fantasize that they are.
They are completely outgunned legally, whatever they have postured so far in response to this truck incident, it was a stroke of genius on their part to not touch the truck.
Trail boosters are activists, and they have the entire news media plus at least half the population on their side. The CMRR will have to resort to some very clever public relations to get out of the predicament they are in. It is going to much more work than repairing track.
The fight is not against a railroad per se, but rather against a museum which does not have the same rights as a railroad, operating or not. This is simply a case where there hasn’t been trains for almost 40 years and the newbies are scared that this move will be come as frequent and as fast as the CSX is doing a mile further into town along their River Line. Most of those who protest did not live in the town when the Ulster and Delaware, the West Shore, and the NYC branch down the Walkill Valley operated steam powered trains connecting with steamboats and canal boats virtually every hour of the day and night. Today a train is a new object being thrown into the quiet lives these people have created for themselves after leaving the helter skelter world of New York City. A dirty box car in their town being worked on by dirty people doing dirty work…how could that happen to them? There in the fist Capital of the Empire State? No, no dirty trains, to dirty paint, no dirty dirt in Kingston. Besides, their new lifestyle is about bicycle paths and walking paths and keeping out these interlopers and their dirty old train cars.
O…Kay. Frankly, if I were a museum trustee I would want to revisit the original decision to locate the museum in Kingston. If possible I would try to relocate it to a place where people would not be inclined to be hostile to an effort to create an institution of cultural and economic value for both the museum and the surrounding area. After all, the Catskill Mountain Rail Road is not planning to open a strip mine. All they want to to continue to build a museum.
There are actually two separate entities, The Catskill Mountain RR, and the Empire State Railway Museum located along the line at Phoenicia. I misspoke when I called CMRR a museum, although they are something of a rolling museum. There is also a third entity, the Trolley Museum of New York on the east side of Kingston along the Hudson.
Unless CMR has a public relations genius on tap they better plan on moving right now. Once the lease is up in 2016, trust me, they’re sunk.
This isn’t the first time a club of any kind, gun club, model railroad club, whatever club has gotten the boot when a lessor’s found another use for the property, or figured out a way to make more money from it.
They should start checking real estate, sooner the better.
Without a change in the goverment players, count on the lease NOT being renewed in 2016 and the rails gone as fast as the ink drys on the environmental impact study. The nasty trains gone and clean black-top for all to use as far as the eye can see. Count on the trail being free from any motorized vehicle (example snowmobiles) as that not a good green use of all that black-top.