"Failure to Yield"
Why do we drive on parkways and park in driveways?
Railroad Forums
NaugyRR wrote:In all honesty, if we're really going down the fantasy-land hole... well, instead of relaying the Harlem north of Millerton, you'd better off rebuilding the old CNE from Millerton over the hill through Lakeville and Salisbury to the Housy at Canaan and running your Berkshire Hills service to Pittsfield that way. At least you'd hit all the population centers and avoid the 20+ miles of twisting track that follows the river from Lime Rock to Kent.Fishrrman wrote:Insofar as passenger service is concerned:There's nothing really around between Wassaic and Hillsdale, aside from Millerton and to a lesser extent Amenia.
Better to extend the Harlem line up to Hillsdale, and have connecting bus service to Great Barrington, Pittsfield, and Chatham.
The "rail trail people" would fight it, however!
Millerton can't even figure out its parking situation without trains, and traffic suuuucccckkkssss during peak times with parallel parking on both sides of the street and no one knowing how to use a crosswalk/people just swinging car doors open without looking first. Having the train stop in the center of town would just exacerbate that on a massive scale.
Then the stretch between Millerton and Hillsdale is just miles, and miles, and miles, of nothing. And once you get to Hillsdale, more nothing. You've got Hudson to the west on 23 which is already served hourly by Amtrak, Barrington and Egremont and some ski areas to the east but nothing I can see really generating passenger numbers to justify the amount of infrastructure creation and the stupid amount of money in eminent domain purchases of private properties and farms, not to mention reclamation of the popular rail trail (which people, including myself, actually use). Not to mention you'd either need new equipment or need to assign more dual modes to the extended service, 'cause I don't think the Brookvilles would be up to the task.
And then there's the fact that extending Metro-North into Columbia County would subject the residents there to the not-so-popular MTA tax, which would most likely be even less popular there.
NaugyRR wrote:Even that would be a bit of a stretch, and would still exacerbate Millerton's already crap traffic situation.I mean, if we're talking about a project this big and disruptive, the least of your worries would be diverging from the original CNE alignment near the Blackberry River and looping around south of the lumberyard to effect a north-facing junction with the Housy main line near the depot. Same goes on the Millerton end- no reason you'd have to follow the CNE/ND&C/P&E alignment, you could cross 44 and link up with the Harlem south of town. Thus avoiding screwing up traffic downtown.
Most of the old CNE RoW has been built over with residences, businesses, and farm lands, including property owned by some pretty wealthy businessmen/women and celebrities. It'd be a pretty hardcore eminent domain battle, that's for sure, haha.
That's not even to mention the infrastructure needed, like re-bridging the RoW across 41 in Lakeville and reinstalling the diamond in Canaan. Plus running trains from Millerton to Canaan would involve a reverse move on the wye to get them facing north again. Trains would need to run towards Specialty Minerals, then reverse down the southeast leg of the wye onto the Housy's tracks before heading north.
NaugyRR wrote:Fair points on all counts Ridgefielder, it wasn't my intention to come off as argumentative, just to provide counter-points.Didn't sound argumentative to me at all, no worries! Just harmless musings here all around, I think. No need for anyone to get fired up.
Jeff Smith wrote:Housy would love that. A Wassaic Union station they can get MNRR to pay for and run their "passenger service" LOL.I really do think the path of least resistance would be GCT via Danbury and South Norwalk. Am thinking a summer-weekend-only through service like the Cape Flyer), plus maybe a connecting train at Danbury at other times. Basically NH operations ca. 1965, after they lost the mail contract. Getting the Maybrook in the mix would involve some very pricey construction in the Village of Brewster, since I believe the former site of the Putnam Jct. connection between the Maybrook and the Harlem Division has been built over.
As unlikely as we're being, and before we piss off "Dutch" LOL, who actually ran over the route, the more likely would be a connection over the Maybrook, with the construction of a loop at Dykemans or in Brewster so you don't have to change ends.
Fun to talk about, anyway.
Housy can run a shuttle from Pittsfield because the only thing happening is the pilot train they say they’re going to test on the B&A from NYP.They may get more business now because of this: