Beacon Line Maintenance / Current Status / Background

DutchRailnut wrote:F-line seem to understate amount of public crossings between Danbury station and Dykemans.
5 are HRRC : White street, Balmforth ave, Maple ave, Main street, Seeger street.
4 on Metro north: Joe's hill rd, Crosby ave, Pumphouse Rd, Tonetta lake Beach crossing.

I obliquely mentioned the 4 right adjacent to Danbury Station, but maybe should've been clearer about that. And I didn't say Dykemans...I said Southeast if they opt to save their pennies to cut the redundant 2 miles to Dykemans by tying in to Southeast Yard. Which is duly acknowledged to be an "IF" proposal that MNRR may not be interested in ever pursuing.


IF they slash the redundant Dykemans route miles with a Southeast cut-over then the MTA-control part of the line between the Harlem and the CT state line has two crossings to maintain: Joes Hill Rd., Brewster near the state line, and N. Main St. on the TBD cutover to the Harlem. That's it for them. The rest will be CDOT-control whenever HRRC inevitably becomes hard-up on cash to sell out: Segar St., Danbury; and then the quartet on 4 consecutive blocks adjacent to Danbury Station (CT 53, Maple Ave. one-way, Balmforth Ave. one-way, White St.). Also one gravel driveway private crossing out near the state line to Express Windsor Films, Inc. if you want to count that.

8 public crossings + 1 limited-liability private crossing in 10 miles spread across 2 states and 2 funding sources vs. 10 CDOT public crossings + 1 private crossing on 8 miles of New Caanan Line. With only the Danbury Station quartet and N. Main, Brewster being anything of moderate-or-better traffic volume. That really isn't a lot of maintenance by any empirical measure if they want to keep future considerations perpetually open on this Southeast-Danbury segment.

there use to be loop in Brewster itself, but grade and curvature were a problem for diesels so the dykemans location was chosen .
no one at MTA would want trains from CTDOT running on already saturated Harlem line, so I don't know were your going with that.
adding the 25 minutes (at higher speeds) to Harlem time for Brewster to GCT would no longer make that route competitive with Danbury/mainline routing.

Plenty of people who live in the immediate area of Danbury have cars and drive to Brewster or Southeast for faster and more direct service. There is absolutely no way running a train to Danbury by way of the Harlem and Beacon Line would compete with driving.

Beacon, Brewster and Danbury are 50 plus miles from New York City and all have decent rail service to and from the city. It doesn't make any sense at all to me to try to link these three localities by rail passenger service especially when you can run a bus between all three of them in a fraction of the time it would take a passenger train to do the same and a a fraction of the cost. If the line was still privately owned in New York State then MAYBE it would have some sort of a rail future but being owned by the State of New York and with politics as they are, the NUMBYs and locals would make such a stink if noisy trains were to return to this line that I could smell it all the way down here in South Florida. I remember going from Oak Point to Beacon and Selkirk with the new (at the time) GP-38-2's and those horns were really loud. East Main Street and Churchill Street in Beacon were right in the heart of the upper town and boy would they attract attention, probably in a wrong way. I used to enjoy my rides in the country on a freight train and getting paid for it as well but today they are gone. At least I have a lot of memories plus a tape of a head end ride over the entire line between Shelton and Beacon. How about a tourist train? I don't think it is a good location for one, too many lousy neighbors (NIMBYs, vandals and not enough consistent business and costly to operate. I can only imagine how much rail and tie work alone would be necessary even for a lowly tourist train to run at 10 MPH. There was talk a while ago about restoring the incline up Mt. Beacon and I think the powers to be decided it would not work out, this would be a far better idea than a tourist train in the area. The Mount Beacon Incline was truly a great ride, too bad it is not with us today.
Noel Weaver

Firgured that the Beacon line was to become a "feeder" to Harlem line at B north(Southeast)running a "shuttle" service from
Hopewell Jct,Stormville, "Pawling West", Holmes,and maybe Towners,crossing over at CP Dyke to connecting service at B North(Southeast)
to GCT.
Consider the NY/CT line to Danbury a lost cause as the ROW as reverted to "SWAMP LAND" thru the Mill Plain- CP Fair Grounds area.
That could change IF ConnDOT finally Boots HRRC off the tracks and out of the state.
Then DRM could run a limited run "tourist" type service to Hopewell Jct, or at least to the state line.

njt/mnrrbuff wrote:Plenty of people who live in the immediate area of Danbury have cars and drive to Brewster or Southeast for faster and more direct service. There is absolutely no way running a train to Danbury by way of the Harlem and Beacon Line would compete with driving.

People don't only drive from the Danbury area to Southeast, but also from points north (such as Patterson, Pawling, etc) to Southeast as the frequency of service is significantly greater than the Wassaic trains.

I wonder what the demand for service from Poughkeepsie/Beacon to White Plains/Stamford is? At one time, Dutchess County established a route between Poughkeepsie and White Plains, but I don't know if it survived or not.

Backshophoss wrote:Firgured that the Beacon line was to become a "feeder" to Harlem line at B north(Southeast)running a "shuttle" service from
Hopewell Jct,Stormville, "Pawling West", Holmes,and maybe Towners,crossing over at CP Dyke to connecting service at B North(Southeast)
to GCT.
Consider the NY/CT line to Danbury a lost cause as the ROW as reverted to "SWAMP LAND" thru the Mill Plain- CP Fair Grounds area.
That could change IF ConnDOT finally Boots HRRC off the tracks and out of the state.
Then DRM could run a limited run "tourist" type service to Hopewell Jct, or at least to the state line.

I kinda thought the same thing about the DRM. Didn't they run a couple of excursions out that direction back in the day? I'm actually kind of surprised they didn't push onto that section for even more 'rare mileage' when I rode the MBRRE excursion from Canaan to Danbury.

As far as the Beacon portion of the route goes, maybe a rail bike operation would be possible, or are the grades too steep for that? Or maybe a low-overhead RDC operation like the BSRM is running out of North Adams? Do any tourist groups offer speeder or hy-rail excursions?

In the world that exists outside of reality, I think a trolley/interurban excursion would be as cool as it would be impractical. Who the hell's gonna wanna string all that wire AND power/maintain it? Haha

Backshophoss wrote:Firgured that the Beacon line was to become a "feeder" to Harlem line at B north(Southeast)running a "shuttle" service from
Hopewell Jct,Stormville, "Pawling West", Holmes,and maybe Towners,crossing over at CP Dyke to connecting service at B North(Southeast)
to GCT.
Consider the NY/CT line to Danbury a lost cause as the ROW as reverted to "SWAMP LAND" thru the Mill Plain- CP Fair Grounds area.
That could change IF ConnDOT finally Boots HRRC off the tracks and out of the state.
Then DRM could run a limited run "tourist" type service to Hopewell Jct, or at least to the state line.

Any thought I ever had also revolved around a shuttle service, although I'd suggest Poughquag as Hopewell Junction would be very indirect having to make that long loop. Now, you could do shuttle service from HJ to Beacon. That could take some traffic off those back roads.

One other thought occurred to me: what about a commuter lot at the Danbury Fair mall? Heading towards Danbury, NOT towards NY. It seems to me that the downtown Danbury station is a bit constrained, and this might be easier for folks up around Candlewood lake or up route 7 to get to vs. going down Main and White St. Unless CtDOT ever gets off their a$$ and starts service to New Milford.

Rockingham Racer wrote:I wonder what the demand for service from Poughkeepsie/Beacon to White Plains/Stamford is? At one time, Dutchess County established a route between Poughkeepsie and White Plains, but I don't know if it survived or not.

That was my only other thought; White Plains (Stamford would be a stretch). Those folks might want to get off 9/Taconic/684/287/etc. No reverse moves required. I"ve often thought that might be a good Amtrak route (White Plains being a destination) although getting to Penn from the Harlem is (near) impossible unless you add back the SD wye. Which won't happen at an area that's already a bottleneck.

Final thought: they'd be better off spending their money on the TZB rail, although you wouldn't have an eastbound connection from the Hudson; you'd only have a southbound connection from the TZB.

First the state does not own the Maybrook in CT, imminent domain is out, cause state refused to buy it from Conrail.
Housatonic RR did , and unless their willing to sell , its a no go.
DRM is poor fantasy, they have no equipment fit to leave the gate, non of their equipment can be made FRA compliant unless a few members hit lottery and decide to donate it all.

The track set up at CP 58 (Beacon) works against a Beacon/Hopewell Jct shuttle,Hopewell Jct to Brewster North was the better setup.
You have a Running repair shop at Put Jct,with fuel. Switch at CP 58 faces north,reverse move back to Harmon,maybe a fuel truck at Poughkeepsie.
HRRC has let Mill Plain-Fairgrounds revert to swamp land,and let everything Shelton to Derby Jct to rot as well to spite P&W

Look the Housy turned entire Beacon line story into a bunch of claptrap, no one at MN is looking at Danbury to Brewster what a Maroon ;-)
http://www.newstimes.com/local/article/ ... 978155.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Wondered where that rotten smell was,that newstimes piece reeks!

I'd have to look at the old track maps to see the setup at Beacon. It would only work if there were a stub that passengers could cross-platform transfer to the inbound without fouling the main. It's a flyover there, right? As for reversing, you'd be using push-pull mini anyway. If you figure you're only running it once per morning and evening, you could use it in revenue service as a shuttle down to CH.