Join the discussion on the following article:
Ontario mayor wants Canadian National tracks out of town
Add graffiti covered equipment to the equation and its easier to see why people who don’t like trains have little tolerance for them. The railroads are not helping their cause by portraying themselves covered in these graffiti images of crime and decay…which are proven to lower property values.
The very existence of Niagara Falls, Ontario is because of Canadian National Railway and its predecessors. Passenger train service would cease. Since the Mayor will not accept any sensible solution like grade separation, perhaps he should move himself out of the city.
CN: Maybe your prime mandate should include the good citizens of the city also. Their safety should be a top concern also. Perhaps Transport Canada should comment on this.
The line in question runs from the northern part of the city toward Port Robinson, where CN has a local yard with a few customers along it. In order to give the city what it wants, CN would have to reroute freight for that area over CP (former TH&B) from Bay View Junction via Welland to service them.
When it comes to commerce, that mayor sounds totally out of his senses.
This smacks of Jesse Jackson / Al Sharpton / big government - style extortion. “Do what we want or else face endless harassment”. CN should take the money, reroute their track out of town, and then make damn sure Niagara Falls will never see one penny of property taxes or any other revenue paid by the railroad or its employees. I’m glad they basically told the Mayor to take a flying leap. With the fiscal shape the local casinos are in, you think he’d want every cent of revenue he can lay his grubby little hands on. But then that’s why you get people like that in public office - it’s a lot easier to surround yourself with sycophants and pontificate on subjects you know absolutely nothing about, than to actually try to meet a payroll or meet a real budget, or show a profit and offer a stock that investors would want to buy. “Tar, Feathers, Rail, Politician - Some Assembly Required”. I don’t literally advocate that practice, but it’s about time we the people rise up and put the Fear of God back in these idiots who are elected to SERVE us.
That darn railroad came out of no where, get it out of MY city! Who gave permission for CN anyway! We’ve all have heard it play out before. Funny, you never hear anyone complain about having a highway with all that heavy truck traffic coming through town. Get those smoking semi’s out of here!
Well said Dan, I’ve spent 39 years with a family business, the last 14+ years as the “boss”, trying to stay in business. Yet, In spite of the self appointed wonders who want the airport moved, the smelly factory ‘de-smelled’, the 100 year old pig farm closed, the railroad moved at the railroads expense, etc., all of the employees were able to cash their checks each week and the ever increasing taxes were paid and sometimes even I got paid. Perhaps Mr. ‘Wonder Boy’ the mayor could just hand CN a blank check to pay for relocation?
If “We The People” don’t start doing something to take back control from these “elected officials” we are doomed. They simply do not have a clue as to how the real world works. Forever in their little bubbles convinced that ALL businesses are rich and can afford to pay for anything the ‘bubble heads’ deem necessary. It never ceases to amaze me they never look beyond their own noses at what they propose will do to their tax revenue, the peoples jobs, etc.
Sorry for the rant, I’m just from a city that has collapsed thanks to elected officials who felt GM had endless pockets and that they “Owed” the city and it’s citizens something more than the thousands of HIGH paiding Union jobs, (at one point 80,000 in this town), and millions of dollars in taxes each year.
Hopfully CN continues to smile and ignore.
My apologies,
It’s straight out of “Atlas Shrugged”. Ayn Rand saw what was happening in the early - mid 20th Century and accurately predicted what was coming economically and politically. I read AS several years ago and it was really unnerving; a lot of what she foresaw has come to pass or in the process. God bless you, Bob. It is people like you who make this country work as well as it does, despite the escalating interference by the Nanny State. I think we’ve seen the beginning of a backlash against the ruling/political class, but we need many millions more to stand up and say “enough”.
Perhaps CN should offer to remove the offending road xings, since they are on railroad property. Then they could helpfully point out all of the city buildings that have encroached on the railroad right of way, and the need to have those removed, at city expense, of course.
“JIM NORTON from ALABAMA
Add graffiti covered equipment to the equation and its easier to see why people who don’t like trains have little tolerance for them. The railroads are not helping their cause by portraying themselves covered in these graffiti images of crime and decay…which are proven to lower property values.”
What? Have you ever noticed the closed up empty buildings in downtown areas? Most of those got that way because government made it too hard to survive what with all of the regulations they impose.
I don’t believe the mayor’s assertion that breakdowns and malfunctions are taking place on the CN tracks. Like most people who know nothing about railways, he probably doesn’t realize that trains have to stop or slow down in response to signals, especially on a single track line. The CN Grimsby subdivision, which carries all the trains he is talking about, runs past my back yard about thirty miles west of Niagara Falls, and I have never seen any breakdowns or malfunctions. It would become useless (except for one daily passenger train) if all the freight was diverted onto the TH&B as the mayor wants, although admittedly that would make the distance from Bayview to Buffalo a bit shorter. The TH&B would have to be equipped wit CTC if that happened, and I don’t hear the mayor offering to pay for that.
Late 19th century, early 20th century, towns fought each other in order to get the railroad to run through theirs! Today, get the hell out!
To clarify my previous remarks, the track that the mayor objects too leaves the Grimsby sub in the north end of the city and takes a circuitous route through the city to Welland and Fort Erie. The one passenger train on the Grimsby sub crosses the river to and from Niagara Falls NY on a bridge that no longer carries freight trains rather than going through the city. Niagara Falls would like to have GO Transit commuter service to Toronto on the Grimsby sub, but CN might apply to abandon the Grimsby sub if it was no longer used by freight trains. As the saying goes, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Something here caught my eye, when CN suggested that slow or stopped trains are part of railroading. I disagree. My dad worked for a whole lot of years on the former Nickel Plate, now part of NS. And I don’t ever recall any time when the NKP simply stopped a train where there were street crossings involved, unless they “cut the crossings” involved. The dispatchers knew where they could hold a train without disrupting the city, especially in Hammond, IN with it’s many crossings. The efficiency of the railroad stops when a train is stopped and the commerce it hauls goes NOWHERE. Modern day railroading deleted one major practice, that is holding a train at the yard, until there was a place to put it at it’s destination. The early days of railroading was a bit different, even when it included interacting with other railroads. In the early days you never saw a train stopped, un-crewed on the mainline because the crews NEVER “died” due to excessive hours worked. How many times do we see this, even when street crossings are involved. The “Desk 10” dispatcher on the CN is very adamant about NOT “cutting a crossing”, even when suggested by the crew - Why? I think it’s time the railroad industry takes a good look back at how it was done during those more efficient years. They may learn something.
May be the railroad should moved out of town. And then say to the town you cannot use ANYTHING that has moved by rail because you do not think that you need the railroad.
I wonder if the railroad or the town was there first.