Originally Posted by
Steve B.
I found it interesting that they have not maintained the rails, with many gaps over streams, with deteriorated bridges and the rails removed. Means Metro North is no longer using this route to transfer cars from Harlem line Hudson and vice versa.
I thought they actually did some track work as part of building the trail, moving the rails consistently to one side.
Anyway, they've filed to abandon it.
I was among the many who formed the impression that they'd done equipment moves between the Harlem and Hudson but it turns out that's not true: what they did was move things between the New Haven and the Harlem. Only IIRC in the filing they want to abandon that (the "old" bit of Maybrook between Brewster and the CT line) too!
Basically it's the Harlem line that's the outlier, for the Hudson and New Haven you can pay someone else to move your stuff over their tracks in NE CT and possible SE MA - tracks where maintenance is funded by the fact that freight moves on them daily as that's the route through Selkirk where everything's gone since the Poughkeepsie bridge became an issue for modern weight trains and then burned (it ignited fairly frequently, there had been a fire patrol after every train, then no more fire patrol...)