This deserves first place on home page for a month. What a story, telling of such a great way of recording fading railroad history. I tip my hat to you Mr. Del Vecchio.
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Nice night shot. I'm impressed with how clean the power is, especially for a rail train.
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what a waste! So, now WE HAVE TO PUT IT ALL BACK AGAIN at taxpayer's expense ! Conrail NEVER should have been ALLOWED to "pull it up."
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Thanks, Cameron and Matt for the kind words. The photo reproduced a little brighter here than it looked on my screen. That was a melancholy time for this 20-something photographer. Documenting the event was exciting, but the circumstances were sad. You're right, Rich, that it was a waste. Our Chapter and other groups fought to save this line, there were newspaper stories each day. Conrail owned the line, the State did not, and there wasn't the enthusiasm in State politics to move quickly enough, or at all. This line was built on millions of cubic-yards of fill. The developer who bought it was going to move that fill to New York City for the Westway highway project. Moving the fill would have been impractical as the rip-rap used to make the fills would have had to have been blasted and crushed, then shipped. The developer did well reselling the line to the State years later. The Pennsylvania politics were a big part of keeping the line intact for future rail, and it'll be the PennDot funds that get it built the rest of the way when that finally happens. There is one hero who did a lot of behind the scenes work, John Willever. As a retired DOT manager, he was able to do the writings required to save the bridges and culverts that local interests wanted removed for one reason or another. Today these areas are grade crossings or wider bridges, instead of projects that would have obliterated the right of way. I hope we historians can name some part of the Cut-Off project for Willever when the time comes. Meanwhile, passenger service on this line isn't going to start until NJTransit has another tunnel under the Hudson. New York-Penn trains are full and current tunnels cannot handle more volume. Sure, Hoboken can handle some more volume, but there's no way to keep riders from transferring to a Penn-train. In time.
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