New Jersey Seashore Lines: was CNJ being cleard Woodmansie>N

Holy crap, you mean people are reading this outside of Jersey?! If I had known that, I never would have been so opinionated......
Yeah, it's a different world out there these days, with the WORLD wide web; I guess we all need to be cautious about what we speculate about, and how we go about saying it......

I think the sky over Timonium is the same color as that over Cape May Court House. And I believe the water supplies have similar issues.

EDM5970 wrote:I think the sky over Timonium is the same color as that over Cape May Court House. And I believe the water supplies have similar issues.

Pretty much.
Back in the day I thought this Riffin character was a good person who was actually trying to help the industry, now that all the truth comes out I'd have to think otherwise... Sad!

My personal interpretation Of Mr. Riffin's filing is fairly basic so reality is probably a bit more complex. It would appear that Mr. Riffin is not necessarily concerned directly with the NJSL application but wants to use the whole historical issue (Conrail abandonment, conversion to private industrial trackage, exemption from Reactivation Ruling) to get the STB to reverse the abandonment ruling given to Conrail in 1985 as a precedent for him to appeal a previous ruling from the STB in regards to the Maryland & Western rail line that he was seeking to take over. If he can convince the Board that the abandonment was improper, this will somehow support an appeal by him for takeover and final acceptance of him as a "railroad" and eventually also be used to force municipal agencies in Maryland to repair grade crossings that had been ripped out and reverse other "damages" by other parties because the M&W ROW would be declared Not Abandoned or just OOS and all actions that danmaged the property would be considered improper or not legal/without proper authorization.

This seems to be all hinged on the use of the word "interchange" instead of "put cars out for pickup" by Ashland Railway in their applications.

If memory serves me, the rail link into Lakehurst is currently the only link to the mega base. There was some talk several years ago that Rep., Saxton wanted to have the line from Mt. Holly to Fort Dix put back in to supply the mega base. But that idea died when he retired.

Later!
Mr. Ed

An interesting read on Mr. Riffin entitled

" Train Wreck One Man's Dreams of a Local Freight Line Run Smack Into Reality"

http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=14634

No wonder NJSL and Clayton
http://www.stb.dot.gov/filings/all.nsf/ ... enDocument
don't want to be associated with the man.

Doug D.

Mr. Ed wrote:If memory serves me, the rail link into Lakehurst is currently the only link to the mega base. There was some talk several years ago that Rep., Saxton wanted to have the line from Mt. Holly to Fort Dix put back in to supply the mega base. But that idea died when he retired.

Later!
Mr. Ed

Yes, it is the only rail link into the Ft. Dix/ MacGuire AFB/ Lakehurst NAS complex. It is not in any way convenient to the Air Force or Army areas of the reserve, however.

Im doing a research report on CNJ's Southern Division does anybody know any good sites for info? I already know rob staples site

I just had a chance to look at the two links that DougD provided, just a few posts back. The first link takes you to a two year old City Paper article that shows just how out of touch this man is. I've made reference in the past to the ficticious law firm of "Riffin, Griffin, Cohen and Moran". Here is the source-

The second link speaks for itself.

southern sec. kid wrote:Im doing a research report on CNJ's Southern Division does anybody know any good sites for info? I already know rob staples site

There are some books out there. My favorite is " The Trail of the Blue Comet ". Written by William J.Coxey, Christopher Baer and Paul W. Schopp. This is available thru the Ocean County Library.

On the internet, there are a couple of very informative sites that I frequently draw inspiration from:

1. http://octrainguy.com/ And he is a poster in these forums too.
2. http://www.thebluecomet.com/cnjsoudiv.html

Do some Googling and chase 'em down.

Thanks, Meghan, for a little more history on Mr. Riffin; I was unaware of any more than 2 or 3 instances of questionable behavior, and as time goes by, I am not surprised by his additional antics.

And thank you, Mr. Bowen, for your clarification regarding ownership of the Southern Secondary. I always hate to quote Wikipedia.........

Meghan wrote:


By the way Rising, oops I mean Eric, are you ever going to move those cars in Boonton? My daughter wasn't even born yet when you missed the first deadline.


(

Hahahahahaha!!!

Good call Meghan.

I loved reading that article about Riffin. I think that the approach he is taking, looking for weakness in the system that he can exploit, is potentially brilliant. Unfortunately brilliant and nuts are closely related and unfortunately, it appears that this guy is clearly in the nuts catagory . The downside is that similar legal loopholes will likely be closed if others try this approach.

This stuff is very interesting!

Regards,

Art S.

Thanks to everyone who has posted real information, and photos.

When I first heard about the tree clearing in 2006, I put this in the
"It'll be up and running right after the Lackawanna Cutoff is back in business."

Well, looks like this line may make it to active status first, although, obviously no guarantees.

With apologizes to Bill Maher.....

NEW RULES.....

1. No more online creaming in your jeans about full restoration of the Blue Comet Route.
It's not going to happen. Stop it! This is a RR forum, not Santa's Lap.

2. Same goes for the dreaming about what the power for NJSL might be. Let's actually
fix the track 1st, then we can play "Guess the power" . I'm sure Tony Macrie is reading, to make
sure he picks the most popular engine for this operation.

3. Mandatory reading for all posters on this thread....
a) The difference between Class 1, Class 2, and Class 3 railroads.
b) Union shops vs. Non-Union shops
c) Trackage agreements between Railroads...just how does it all work. (No, you cannot run on someone
else's railroad just because you want to.)
d) Politics, NJ, and the STB, or "Why you want to deal with someone who has already gotten a RR running in NJ"


4. Optional.....
Get a job on a railroad, any railroad, for any length of time. You'll learn a lot, if all this seems confusing.

P.S. I used to try to answer a lot of questions on the forum, but I just got tired of seeing the same "railroading 101"
questions over and over again. I guess we need to have a Railroading 101 thread here somewhere.
We can start with "green over red vs. red over red" Sorry if I'm putting down some folks here, but if you're a
regular poster, you should know a lot of this stuff by now.

And will all recruits reporting to Parris Island please report with an M-16A2 service rifle, the full knowledge of its operation, complete uniforms, the ability to drill and follow orders correctly, a full understanding of the history, duties and operations of the US Marine Corps, experience in at least 1 tour of duty in a combat zone, and a regulation high and tight.

We could shave like 13 weeks off of Boot Camp that way.