by The Tenth Legion
Who is responsible for maintaining all the spurs of the NYA's customers, the NYA or the customer itself?
Railroad Forums
The Tenth Legion wrote:Who is responsible for maintaining all the spurs of the NYA's customers, the NYA or the customer itself?From what I have heard, It is the customers who maintain the sidings.
In joint use territory, the LIRR maintains the switch and up to the derail. Anything past the derail is upto the NYAR and whatever agreement I guess they have in place with the costumer. Some costumers have to trackmobiles to shuffle cars. The New York and Atlantic pays hefty fees to for switch upkeep to the LIRR. This is why alot of times the switch will be torn out if there doesn't seem to be any potential future use. An example of this would be American Tissue up on the Port Jeff.To expand on what freightguy said, LIRR is responsible for maintenance of the switch and the siding up to the derail. In reality, past the derail, no maintenance is ever performed until a derailment forces emergency repairs.
With the 84 lumber switch, I heard that was blocked by the other spur, Riverhead Building Supply having some sort of political ties. In what this person told me, 84 lumber would be taxed heavily to be able to use that switch, atleast as long as RBS is in business. As with all of these companies that don't take rail traffic, for one reason or another...it's a shame, because it really would benefit everyone to have less trucks on the road.It has nothing to do with taxes. Taxes in the form you mention would be unconstitutional and would be overturned in a court of law.
Isn't the Town, by obviously acting in the best interest of Riverhead Building Supply to prevent a competitor from receiving product by rail, interfering in interstate commerce?Yes they are. But the cost of legal fees to prove this in court would cost more than the permit. So, they'd just as soon truck it. With the economy what it is right now, it's probably not worth it anyway.