by RussNelson
Well! A new unfinished railroad! And I thought I had pretty much all of them. May I publish your photo on my web page?
Railroad Forums
Moderator: Otto Vondrak
Alcochaser wrote:It was an extension of the NYS&W Ontrack service in Syracuse NY from Carousel Mall eastward that would add three new stops. One at the Amtrak station in Syracuse, One at the baseball park, and one at the farmers market. The grading and all the station platforms were 100% completed. No rails were ever laid. There was a snafu in driving the pilings for the bridge over a street where the bridge is adjacent to the (at the time Conrail, now CSX) mainline. The old NYC area bridge started to settle and Conrail made them stop construction.not to stur up a bees nest but I beleve that this was covered in anouther a couple of outher topics.
march hare wrote:As a person who does a fair amount of historical industrial research (I clean up hazardous waste sites for a living) allow me to suggest a newly available research tool.Some of them are former roads, of course. Or occasionally former rivers! Look at the property tax maps of Manhattan and you can figure out where the rivers and roads were before the street grid went in.
Most counties now have their property tax maps in electronic form, often available on line. Many uncompleted RRs (and even a few "paper" ones that never built anything) will leave historic evidence behind, in the form of funny looking, long parcels of land that curve around a bit. Many times, the property was acquired, the RR went bust, but the property lines remained in the funny shapes they'd been carved into.
I've run across several mystery ROWs this way, some of them in the middle of nowhere.
Lehighton_Man wrote:http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=r5c8ct ... vl=2&sty=bYes, that's the one.
I'm going to guess that was the bridge that stopped all construction?
It appears to me that this was a very small venture... Less than a Mile in length... Doesn't appear that it would've made any money in the long run.Passenger transportation hasn't really "made any money" since the 1920s, except for WWII, and it's even questionable whether it ever paid for its infrastructure *before* that. OnTrack would have been a useful public transportation / economic development resource, but without the bridge, it simply wasn't good for much.
RussNelson wrote:Well! A new unfinished railroad! And I thought I had pretty much all of them. May I publish your photo on my web page?I've walked the whole length of the unused section (staying on public roads). Do it the next time you stop at the Syracuse Amtrak station, it's kind of interesting (if a little disturbing) -- there are lovely modern platforms with weeds growing through them.
neroden wrote:I've often wondered about the economics of passenger rail at the turn of the 20th century. Did the railroads ever turn a profit on commuter service? All I can say for sure is that the railroads had many sources of revenue supporting passenger rail. I do think that the railroads were looking forward to a level of economic and population growth that never occurred from 1920 onward.Lehighton_Man wrote:http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=r5c8ct ... vl=2&sty=bYes, that's the one.
I'm going to guess that was the bridge that stopped all construction?
It appears to me that this was a very small venture... Less than a Mile in length... Doesn't appear that it would've made any money in the long run.Passenger transportation hasn't really "made any money" since the 1920s, except for WWII, and it's even questionable whether it ever paid for its infrastructure *before* that.
neroden wrote:OnTrack would have been a useful public transportation / economic development resource, but without the bridge, it simply wasn't good for much.Assuming for a moment that OnTrack had ever been completed as originally envisioned, the system would still have faced an uphill battle. In hindsight, the "Regional Market" wouldn't have drawn much patronage even if the Park Street bridge project had been completed. Ultimately, there is some merit to the idea of connecting the Amtrak station with points south, but realistically, the odds of daily passenger service between Syracuse and Binghamton over the NYS&W are very remote these days.
dj_paige wrote:Unambiguous remains of Rochester, Nunda and Pennsylvania Railroad grading found on Bowen Road in Chili, NY. Photos on Flickr, also linked on Russ's site.Even more unambigiuous evidence (several hundred yards of substantial grading) exists deep in the interior of Black Creek Park. The grading skirts a swamp about 1/2 mile northwest of the intersection of Union St and Morgan Rd.