by jrevans
SemperFidelis wrote:I made a pretty honest effort around 2004 or 2005 to save the line as far north as Coopersburg for shipping sand/stone, but was sabotaged by SEPTA. More recently, when this whole trail thing started being mentioned again, I made another effort (again for sand) but was again met by very strong resistance.Wow. I didn't realize that anyone with actual, appropriate, rail-related business had attempted to properly develop a plan to utilize the tracks North of Quakertown. Wow. I always thought that the H&K place in Coopersburg would have been an ideal industry to kick-start service, but I didn't realize you had a real plan. Can you share how SEPTA derailed your plans?
The best hope for the line, prior to the rails being removed, would have been to resume sand shipments to Haines & Kibblehouse's plant and Rahn's Concrete Plant in Coopersburg, PA. H&K is a very pro-rail company which now owns 1 direct rail served sand pit and 1 indirectly served pit. H&K Coopersburg, back when we had an economy to speak of, was taking about 10-15 truck loads of sand a day (7 or so railcars) and the Rahn's plant was taking a similar amount.
C'est la vie. I'll just sit here and watch my railcars take the grand tour of Pennsylvania...
Did you try directly approaching East Penn Railways too? Mr. Nolan said that they had some sort of agreement of rights on the out of service portion too, but I don't know the details. The scrappy Nolan run East Penn would have been the best bet to pull off something like that in my opinion.
SemperFidelis wrote:Or, conversely, we could don stupid three pointed hats, strike up the Gasden Flag and campaign against the return of government funded rail service! That would be fun, too...if our collective IQs were much, much lower.Hey, I resemble that remark. Just because I'm a financially responsible, freedom loving, gun-toting conservative who wants all of the existing out of touch, elite politicians tossed out of their cans doesn't mean that I'm against rail transportation. It just has to be sensible, and that aspect seems to be lacking in just about every form of our government these days....
JimE
[url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141029052 ... rains.html[/url] - (Actually, that server doesn't exist any more, so I point to the web archive version....)
[url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141029052 ... rains.html[/url] - (Actually, that server doesn't exist any more, so I point to the web archive version....)