by Gilbert B Norman
Really volks, isn't it time to accept that, even if a magnificently engineered piece of railroad right of way, The Cutoff really goes "nowhere to nowhere". If NJT somehow foresees communities in Western Sussex or Warren, such as Blairstown located in the latter named county, and they have the "copper in the hopper" (and the political pull to get a Fed share for such), fine. Go for it!
But for the project to relaying the twenty miles Andover-Slateford, Amtrak has better places to put its, albeit enhanced under Joe's IIJA Act, still scarce appropriations, than into a "somewhere to nowhere" project NY-Scranton.
Not by my doing (I rode Miss Phoebe to there during '60 - and observing the Cutoff from her Obs was an experience still in my memory bank), but Scranton is "Ein Tote Stadt". I think that much more than "three a day" - or even twelve - operating at highway competitive speeds will hardly be enough to turn the fate of the Wyoming Valley.
But for the project to relaying the twenty miles Andover-Slateford, Amtrak has better places to put its, albeit enhanced under Joe's IIJA Act, still scarce appropriations, than into a "somewhere to nowhere" project NY-Scranton.
Not by my doing (I rode Miss Phoebe to there during '60 - and observing the Cutoff from her Obs was an experience still in my memory bank), but Scranton is "Ein Tote Stadt". I think that much more than "three a day" - or even twelve - operating at highway competitive speeds will hardly be enough to turn the fate of the Wyoming Valley.