Railroad Forums 

  • Catskill Mountain Railroad (CMRR) Discussion - 2016

  • Pertaining to all railroading subjects, past and present, in New York State.
Pertaining to all railroading subjects, past and present, in New York State.

Moderator: Otto Vondrak

 #1365764  by eehiv
 
Sunday January 3rd

On Sunday, January 3rd, George Bain, Hunter Downie and Ryan Lennox cleared the line from Highmount to Pine Hill (1.5 miles) of fallen trees and debris. This area contains the famous "Horseshoe Curves". They also videoed the line so others can share the experience.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... 702&type=3" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

They will be clearing other sections of OOS track over the winter, depending on snow. Contact the crew directly if you want to join them.


Ernie Hunt
Volunteer Coordinator
CMRR
 #1365768  by eehiv
 
Saturday, January 9th

Joe Michaels worked on Engine 407.

In Kingston, Dave Hilliard and Earl Pardini led a crew at Cornell Street consisting of Jim Bruck, Tom Whyte, Walt and Jeff Otto, Tyler Carelli, Franc Libihoul and Ernie Klopping. John Marino joined after lunch. The crew cleaned up the yard and hauled off trash.

At Pine Hill, Ryan Lennox, Hunter Downie and Christian Cole cleared the track from Pine Hill to Giggle Hollow.

Sunday, January 10th

At Pine Hill, Ryan Lennox, Hunter Downie, Christian Cole, Victor and Derek Lane continued cutting around the Giggle Hollow bridge cutting east to about MP 38.75.

http://photos.greatrails.net/s/?p=227625" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Ernie Hunt
Volunteer Coordinator
CMRR
 #1367011  by eehiv
 
Saturday, January 16th

In Kingston, Dave Hilliard and Earl Pardini led a crew at Cornell Street consisting of Jim Bruck, Tom Whyte, Jeff Otto, Tyler Carelli, John Marino, Vince Guido and myself . The crew cleaned up the yard and loaded the old tamper frame, dump body and the 703 step-boxes on Vince's trailer for the move to Phoenicia. Earl's tractor and trailer were moved to the end of the yard for the move to his property.

At Pine Hill, Ryan Lennox, Hunter Downie, Victosand Derek Lane and Christian Cole cleared the track to MP 38.65 just east of Giggle Hollow.



Sunday, January 17th

George Peck and Vince Guido unloaded the dump body, old tamper frame and 703 step boxes in Phoenicia.

At Pine Hill, Ryan Lennox, Hunter Downie, Christian Cole, Victor and Derek Lane, George Bain and I continued cutting around the Giggle Hollow bridge cutting east to about MP 38.45. They also excavated a washover at MP 38.65. The track is now open to MP 38.65 for track cars. You can see photos at Ryan's facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/RyanL3NNOX" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Ernie Hunt
Volunteer Coordinator
CMRR
 #1367118  by TW1976
 
I was in Hudson, NY last weekend and stopped in to one of my favorite book stores (Hudson City Books). I noticed that they have the 2 volume set by John Ham with the titles: Volume One:"Light Rail And Short Ties Through The Notch, The Stony Clove And Catskill Mountain Railroad And Her Steam Legacy" Volume Two: The Old "Up And Down" Catskill Mountain Branch Of The New York Central"

They are asking $245.00 for both books which are signed by the author and in good condition. I believe there is room for negotiation on that price. If you google these books, you will notice that is what some people are asking. A little too rich for my finances at the moment, but a good deal for a serious collector of U&D memorabilia, and anybody interested in the history of the rail line we currently operate our trains on. Here is the Facebook page for Hudson City Books https://www.facebook.com/Hudson-City-Bo ... 742832294/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 #1367135  by liallegheny
 
Ernie,

Along with everything else that has to be done , what is involved in rebuilding the washouts west of Phoenica? It's obvious that you would need quite a few truck loads of stone and fill to repair the roadbed,( not to mention ties and rail) but do you have to deal with the DEP or any other agency before that process could begin or would that be an issue Ulster county would have to handle? Is there a lost cost source for the needed rock and fill? If the FEMA funds were ever released would they cover part of that work, or would this endeavor be solely funded by the railroad?
Are there any other washouts east of Phoenica that still need to be repaired up to the Boiceville bridge?

Any ideas where the railroad will build the "new" yard in the Kingston area?

Nyle
 #1367202  by eehiv
 
To all:

The only washouts from Kingston to Phoenicia are:

MP 18.57 - Butternut Cove - passable by track cars
MP 21.3 - Boiceville Trestle - Destroyed by Hurricane Irene
MP 23.3 - Washout from Hurricane Irene

All of the above have grant money target for their full repair except MP 23.3 which has partial funding only.

Washouts from Phoenicia to Highmount are:

MP 27.9 to 28 (Irene)
MP 28.45 to 27.65 (1987)
MP 28.8 to 28.9 (including bridge removed in 1999)
MP 29.1 to 29.2 (Irene)
MP 31.2 to 32 (Irene and previous)
MP 33.7 to 33.8 (Irene)
MP 33.75 to MP 33.8 (Irene)
MP 36.77 (Big Indian Trestle, removed by county in 2014)
MP 36.9 - Lasher Road overpass, removed by town in 1987.

Stone estimated the restoration of PA to Highmount section at $25 million, including bridges.

New yard location in Kingston has not been decided.

EH
 #1367228  by Otto Vondrak
 
liallegheny wrote:Along with everything else that has to be done , what is involved in rebuilding the washouts west of Phoenica?
All the estimates for cost and materials don't mean much unless the property owner Ulster County changes its mindset (or decides to sell the property to a new owner). That's what's "involved."

-otto-
 #1367247  by Otto Vondrak
 
scoostraw wrote:I wish the CMRR had just gone ahead and rebuilt the line from Highmount to Pine Hill and used the D&U as their contractor.
A nice thought, but why would either party invest in reconstruction of that segment when the entire future of the property is in question?

-otto-
 #1367250  by scoostraw
 
Otto Vondrak wrote:
scoostraw wrote:I wish the CMRR had just gone ahead and rebuilt the line from Highmount to Pine Hill and used the D&U as their contractor.
A nice thought, but why would either party invest in reconstruction of that segment when the entire future of the property is in question?

-otto-
It's my understanding that the D&U expressed a desire to do this several years ago - before the trail talk became intense. I only know what I heard tho, and don't know more about it.
 #1367273  by liallegheny
 
Otto,

In light of recent developments I was under the impression that the railroad was going to stay. I thought, correct me if I'm wrong, that the Phoenica segment of the railroad was never really the issue, it was the Kingston segment that Hein was trying to turn into a trail up to the Ashokan reservoir . Granted Hein wants the current operator of the railroad out and a new operator to run it, which should be determined in the coming months ahead. Who knows what the county will want from the new operator if and when a new lease is awarded.
Otto Vondrak wrote:
scoostraw wrote:I wish the CMRR had just gone ahead and rebuilt the line from Highmount to Pine Hill and used the D&U as their contractor.
A nice thought, but why would either party invest in reconstruction of that segment when the entire future of the property is in question?

-otto-
If the entire future of the property is in question , then why should the volunteers be bothering with keeping the west end of the line open ( or any other part of it), free from trees and overgrowth??? It's obvious that there is some wishful, positive thinking going on for the future which is why i presented the questions about rebuilding the line west from Phoenica. Considering what the dedicated group of volunteers has accomplished on their own over the past few years, anything is possible.

Nyle
 #1367291  by YamaOfParadise
 
At this point, it's more then just the County that's impeding restoration of the Kingston - Phoenicia segment; the bigger force to overcome is the NYCDEP having a conservation easement . The County (as the property owner) still had to legally agree to that in the first place, which probably was a strategic move on the County's part; nonetheless, NYCDEP still made a very convincing argument to the County in the form of money. Here's some relevant quotes from the Stone Consulting report (at least from what I picked out in my post in the other thread; bold/italics/underline added for emphasis). Note that the portion of the line being analyzed in the section of the report these were under was for the "Ashokan Reservoir Area (Basin Rd. Bridge to Rt. 28A Boiceville)":
  • "The City of New York, through [the] DEP, and Ulster County drafted a memorandum of understanding concerning the future of the corridor through the Ashokan Reservoir. This memorandum covered mutual responsibilities, procedures, and DEP funding for the conversion of the rail corridor to a trail corridor over the entire 11.5 mile distance. It allows the easement to continue as a trail easement, but the only alternatives are either a trail corridor, or a freight rail corridor, but not both."
  • "[The] DEP is genuinely concerned of the risk of derailment, contamination or accidental discharge into the water supply by any rail activity, no matter how slow or short the activity may be."
  • "It should be noted that [Basin Road to Glenford Dike] is the only portion of this DEP segment that was proposed, or requested, to be rail-with-trail."
So, it really doesn't look like there's much of a option for the line being restored to rail between Glenford Dike and the Boiceville Bridge unless there's a freight customer on the line in or north of Boiceville... which is both unlikely as far as industries (none noted in the report beyond Basin Road), and offering freight service beyond Kingston is pretty unfavorable because of the large grade (also something noted in the report).

Basically, the railroad does get to continue its existing operations (in Kingston and Phoenicia); the Stone report really didn't read as being biased towards telling Hein what he wants to hear. But the caveat is that the line from Kingston to Phoenicia has significant odds going against it being continuous through the Ashokan Reservoir area.
 #1367310  by liallegheny
 
I understand the issues involved in connecting Kingston to Phoenica....that NYCDEP is now involved in the future of that corridor as well as Hein.....what I was asking about was the line west from Phoenica. If you can't connect the two segments that are now currently running because of the possibility of a walking trail, then what about going west ? Ernie's last couple of updates showed maintenance work being done on the line west which got me thinking/wondering if the repairs would involve the State DEP, considering that part of the washouts are now part of the creek.

I also have to ask the question, why is the NYCDEP spending 2.5 million of the NYC taxpayers money to build a walking trail, when the money could be better spent on the aging infrastructure of the NYC water system. If the residents of the city knew anything about this I think they would be up in arms....I know I'm not happy with it.

Nyle
 #1367319  by YamaOfParadise
 
liallegheny wrote:I also have to ask the question, why is the NYCDEP spending 2.5 million of the NYC taxpayers money to build a walking trail, when the money could be better spent on the aging infrastructure of the NYC water system. If the residents of the city knew anything about this I think they would be up in arms....I know I'm not happy with it.
Basically, NYC's water system primarily relies in keeping their water sources clean to begin with, so they don't need to build and operate nearly as many water filtration plants; with the quantities of water NYC uses, buying conservation easements curb the amount of sources of potential pollution to begin with is more effective.

As for your other comment, I suspect at least some of that'll get used eventually. For Big Indian <-> Highmount/County Line:
Immediately after Pine Hill, the grade climbs the side of the mountain on a pair of reverse horseshoe curves, each nearly a full 180-degree curves, the first one over a valley with a fill and the second one curving around the face of the mountain itself. These two curves were specifically noted by the Ulster and Delaware as being of sufficient interest to them to warrant a lease request to extend their operations to them, at least to Pine Hill, and possibly even as far as the Peekamoose Restaurant at Lasher Rd, but not east of that point. Both curves would appear to be highly scenic in nature, and one of the best available mountain train views available in the Catskills. ... For rail-only use, as DURR is located outside Ulster County, and in-county rail/visitor benefits are marginal at best. The primary benefit is annual lease payments and corridor maintenance paid to Ulster County. DURR does appear ready to operationally connect to this portion, and we would recommend that lease negotiations be reopened, but on a shorter term than 25 years, and that the lease payment be directly linked to revenue plus defined regular maintenance provisions rather than a fixed long-term lease such as was given to CMRR.
It's a little shakier of what'll happen between Phoenicia and Big Indian... it's going to be a lot of work to get anything using the right of way again. So much of the work required to get the RoW back to being intact is very much beyond the scope of what the volunteer forces of either CMRR or DURR are capable of doing on their own.. ~1.33 miles of washouts! Perhaps at least some of the forest (it's probably better called that than "brush") can get cleared after a good deal of the other brushwork on more important areas of the line is already done, but overall some serious cash is going to be needed still to get much done. Here's the report's entire section on it, because it paints the picture far better than I can through paraphrasing.
Just above Phoenicia, significant portions of the right-of- way are completely eroded away from previous flooding. The corridor is generally unwalkable, due to generally heavy brush and tree conditions, and 7000’ of washouts. Brush control has been done in some localized areas, but overall, the corridor consists of two steel rails, leaf-and litter-buried ties that are fully deteriorated, and a new forest growing between the rails. There are also isolated areas of cross-drainage and small bridge loss, and the completely missing two-span steel girder bridge at Big Indian, which was damaged during previous flooding and removed as a streambed hazard, leaving almost no trace of its previous location.

Other than the East Broad Top Railroad in Orbisonia, PA (which ceased operations in 1956 and has not been maintained east of Orbisonia ever since that date) we have not seen tree growth conditions within a roadbed this large, and concentrated, as some portions of this corridor have become. When tree and root growth becomes this pervasive, it is actually easier to recover the corridor as a railroad, because the small stumps and roots can be allowed to deteriorate around newly replaced ties and allowed to rot out without compromising stability. For anything more than a slow-speed excursion railroad, the rail would be completely removed, the subroadbed grubbed and cleared, and new material put down to replace it, essentially, rebuilding the entire roadbed from scratch, only reusing the steel materials.

For trail conditions, it is not significantly different. The trail would have to be cleared of tree growth, then grubbed out to remove more significant roots and stumps that would either re-sprout through the trail surface, or rot into a surface depression over time. In either situation, substantial work has to be done to the subroadbed to stabilize it.

Conceptually, as no interest is shown in this as a rail corridor by CMRR, and is highly unlikely by any other organization, this would remain in this condition until sufficient funding or interest surfaces to perform a trail conversion on remaining and intact segments. County interests, in the meanwhile, could start the arduous task of tree-clearing above the ties, as even to remove the rail will require that work. In some cases, such as immediately above Phoenicia, and in Big Indian, the only cost-effective solutions may be for a side-of-the-road trail development with an intermediate barrier, rather than attempting to reconstruct the in-creek embankment and bridge necessary to restore the original railroad grade.

The loss of this section in its entirety effectively places the concept of an unbroken cross-county connectivity trail in jeopardy (along with usage predictions), and impacts our conclusions on the value of that concept all the way down to Boiceville. position on focusing rail activity north of that point is due in no small point to the truth that it may be many, many years before this corridor portion can be resurrected for fully-conncted trail purposes, but that the Ashokan-Kingston portion has its separate value not necessarily linked to a full countywide connectivity concept.
 #1367324  by liallegheny
 
YamaOfParadise wrote:
liallegheny wrote:I also have to ask the question, why is the NYCDEP spending 2.5 million of the NYC taxpayers money to build a walking trail, when the money could be better spent on the aging infrastructure of the NYC water system. If the residents of the city knew anything about this I think they would be up in arms....I know I'm not happy with it.
Basically, NYC's water system primarily relies in keeping their water sources clean to begin with, so they don't need to build and operate nearly as many water filtration plants; with the quantities of water NYC uses, buying conservation easements curb the amount of sources of potential pollution to begin with is more effective.

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One problem with that concept, NYCDEP already owns the easements. If they don't want the water supply being polluted by the railroad, then stop the railroad from running there. They could leave the tracks in place and restrict it's use.....that doesn't cost me or any other taxpayer anything. To spend 2.5 million to build a parking lot and trail so people can walk by the reservoir is a waste of NYC money that could be better spent elsewhere. If Hein wants a trail let him figure out how to pay for it.
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