What Will Happen to the Railroads

After looking at the comments on the web page that Onno posted about the issue of what to do with the railroads in the Adirondacks, I was surprised at what I saw. I was expecting the comments to be a mix of Train enthusiast arguments and hiker/snowmobilist arguments but I was mistaken. The bulk of the chatter, on this web page at least, was economic. The arguments include local interest in train use, tourist spending on and along the railroads, and raising tax revenue through the operation of the railways. It is interesting to me that there seemed to be no nostalgic or historical argument for maintaining the railroad tracks. From my little experience in the park and after evaluating these comments on this web page, it seems that the state has come to a crossroads of whether to revamp the railroad industry in the Adirondacks and have rail travel be a significant mode of transportation in the park or disband with the sporadic rail travel that currently runs in the park. One of the major complaints in the comments seemed to be that there just aren't that many trains that run nowadays. Personally I'd like to see the rails become very nicely maintained paths for hikers, snowmobiles, etc. It will be interesting to see what the state decides on this hot issue.