WOH-Double tracking

The chances of any abandoned railroads coming back are always next to nothing... especially in the public sector. I'd say if they were making a decision on which route to keep today, they would probably have kept the ex-main Line instead of the Graham since most traffic is now passenger and that line travels through more densely populated areas. It's probably fewer miles to Port Jervis as well but I don't have the exact numbers.

SecaucusJunction wrote:The chances of any abandoned railroads coming back are always next to nothing... especially in the public sector. I'd say if they were making a decision on which route to keep today, they would probably have kept the ex-main Line instead of the Graham since most traffic is now passenger and that line travels through more densely populated areas. It's probably fewer miles to Port Jervis as well but I don't have the exact numbers.

Metro-North did revive the abandoned portion of the Harlem Line from Dover Plains to Wassaic, so it can happen, but probably is not likely West of Hudson.

metrony wrote:They will be. Double tracking needs to happen for the line to be useful.

What do you mean by "useful?"
Have you analyzed the effect of double-tracking? What did your analysis conclude? What assumptions and data did you use to make this conclusion? Exactly how many more passengers would ride? Did you analyze the operating costs of this endeavor?

Seems like there's a lot that could be done to beef up capacity with sidings and signals before you have to go all the way to double-tracking. The Long Island puts 40/day over the single-track between Huntington and Port Jeff, after all.

Didn't know the line wasn't useful already....

SecaucusJunction wrote:The chances of any abandoned railroads coming back are always next to nothing... especially in the public sector. I'd say if they were making a decision on which route to keep today, they would probably have kept the ex-main Line instead of the Graham since most traffic is now passenger and that line travels through more densely populated areas. It's probably fewer miles to Port Jervis as well but I don't have the exact numbers.

Going by the former main saves about 6 miles (with about 1.5 miles difference depending which ROW was used out of Middletown). Granted, I wasn't around at the time of the switch to the Graham, but I'm surprised that they did it given how unpopular it supposedly was, though I'd have to agree that it was a poor decision. Stations away from population and business centers sort of defeat the point of train in my mind.

I would suspect that they were more concerned about freight grades back then. If the traffic was mostly passenger, as it is now, they would have probably saved the main line and Moodna would be vacant. I guess that is a plus anyway. It's all park and ride territory now. It still makes some sense since there isn't a huge downtown population base in that area anyway.

As far as I can recall, what precipitated the change was that Conrail notified MN that since through freight moved via the Graham Line it had no further use for the original main line and MN was at liberty to buy it if they wanted to continue using it; otherwise it would be abandoned. MN then had to consider the best uses for the money it had available at the time, and the main line didn't make the cut.

The old main got torn up after New York State decided it was silly to subsidize two parallel routes.

IOW, the railroads made the agreement on paper and the state took up the tracks.

Passaic River Rat wrote:The old main got torn up after New York State decided it was silly to subsidize two parallel routes.

When was there a question of subsidizing two parallel routes? To the best of my recollection, no commuter service was operated over the Graham Line until NY State decided not to buy the Main Line after Conrail announced its intention to discontinue using it.