Nice catch, Tim! Hard to believe this was shot in April. Sad to hear the news about the SNCR. It's a railway with some nice scenery and some historic infrastructure. Gotta love politicians....
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Beautiful photo, Tim! I, for one, am very disgusted with the SNCR, and more specifically Iowa Pacific, the tank car storage move was a bad enough stunt, especially for a company as rich as Iowa Pacific, but now to threaten closure because the State fought them over it is just disgusting. For those unaware of the scale of the situation, Iowa Pacific had planned to store a continuous string of around 20,000 used tank cars in the towns along the Sanford Lake Branch, this part of the line parallels the Hudson River and Boreas River for many miles in pristine remarkably undisturbed wilderness. Iowa Pacific stated that the cars were "empty" but contained residue from previous use and that they had not been leak-tested, the chemical run off from that many cars could have caused major ecological damage to the surrounding area and damage to many areas downstream of there along the Hudson River, aside from that, a continuous string of that many cars would cause a major wildlife barrier. If the railroad really needed the extra profit, they should have continued hauling gravel from the Tahawus Mine, instead of shutting down the line and using it to store used cars. For once, it appears Governor Cuomo has actually done something right involving our railroads and our wild lands.
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Apparently SNCR has an agreement with Warren County, the owner of the line, to operate excursion trains. Will we be seeing a new operator in the near future?
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At the risk of turning this into a political debate, I respectfully disagree with Joshua Harkness. If the railroad's insurance carrier had no objection and no laws are being broken, then the railroad should be left alone to use their property as they see fit.
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I do agree with that statement, but this is pristine land that has been saved from logging, farming and now industrial and suburban development. It is also State land and what Iowa Pacific wanted to do would have caused immediate effect to that State land, so I feel the State had every right to do what they did. Aside from that, SNCR has a long stretch of unused line south of where they wanted to store the cars which is located several miles from the Hudson River, and it would not be disrupting nearly as much wildlife in this location, why they did not consider this area instead still remains a mystery. If this was a little shortline trying to get by, I would feel very differently, but this is a company that owns 18 highly profitable freight and passenger railroads around the world which bring in $50 million in revenue each year for Iowa Pacific, they simply don't need to money that storing cars will give them, especially not with a profitable, albeit small, freight operation already on the SNCR. If they really wanted to store cars or needed the money that that would bring them, why couldn't they agree with New York to store fewer cars, and possibly a different type of car, along the line? I'm not trying to get political here, I'm just trying to state my opinion in a friendly way.
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Apologies for the multiple long comments, Tim. This is one truly beautiful picture, made even better by the snow and the amazingly well restored BL-2.
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