Welcome to Part 16 on the Lackawanna Cut-Off,
Rebuilding the Cut-Off.
Hi, I'm Chuck Walsh, and I'm president of the North Jersey Rail Commuter Association
and we're going to take a trip over the Cut-Off between here at Lake Hopatcong and
Andover.
That's roughly about seven and a half miles. We're just a about a quarter mile or so east of Port Morris here.
Now, hopefully we can make it across,
since we've had several storms over the last few weeks. Don't know what we'll encounter, so we'll do our best.
Now what we're going to do is
when we go across the Cut-Off I'll try to point out different things, and then we will
end up at
Andover, which is our final destination. But there's also things to talk about over there,
specifically the
station site itself.
There was an alternate station site, which we will visit. And then the
Hudson Farm culvert,
which we'll also visit to show you there and discuss the issues that have been surrounding that
particular location.
But first what we will do is we will
--for those of you been following this series--we'll go to part three of
the interview with Larry Malski who will be talking about
the period of time, when we say rebuilding the Cut-Off, we're talking about the period
from the
acquisition of the Cut-Off by the State of New Jersey, the Department of Transportation, in
2001,
by the use of eminent domain,
through the present time--we're talking 2018--and
we will cover the things that have happened in between, and I will go over that at
Andover.
And all of that will take place after the interview with Larry Malski,
which will be first, and then we'll take the trip across the Cut-Off. So,
here's Larry Malski, President of the Pennsylvania Northeast Regional Railroad Authority.
CHUCK: Here we are back at the Bridge 60 tower in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and
we'll be talking to Larry Malski, who's president of the Pennsylvania Northeast Regional Railroad Authority, and
in this segment we're talking about the timeframe
during which the planning and the rebuilding of the Cut-Off will start.
That's from 2001 until the present time,
2017, 2018.
This is a
key time because
not only is there action taking place in New Jersey but also in
Pennsylvania.
Now once the line is acquired by the State of New Jersey,
that opens the door to
the
seeking of funding
for the replacement of track.
Now this brings us into the almost dreaded subject of studies. In other words,
where there needs to be
documentation, data,
whatever,
planning type of
information that is provided to the government to
justify funding
for a particular project, in this case
the rebuilding of the Cut-Off,
at least in the initial stage, Phase 1 to Andover.
So, I'm going to turn it over to Larry, and
my first question is maybe you can talk to the whole
discussion of studies, because I know that
I'm sure that no-one really likes to hear about that and sometimes, I know, people have a very disparaging view of it, but
they're not done this for the sake of doing them. Clearly, there's there's a real reason. Maybe you can speak to why
studies are necessary and what is accomplished by
conducting them? LARRY: Sure. We'll call this the dreaded studies segment. And
again, we've been involved with them from day one and
everyone wishes the system, the entire system,
the funding system, could be much more efficient. But you know you have to
play with the deck of cards that you're dealt, and we are dealing with the same issues that Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago--
you name the city who's building light rail or extending rail and are extending
heavy rail or whatever form of transit that they're adding to building--
are dealing with and
everyone has had to deal on the same level.
You could question and question the need for some of the studies that have been done,
but bottom line is at the end of the day the studies have led directly to
69 million dollars in funding for the first segment, and that segment, of course, is Port Morris to Andover.
The studies have dealt with a lot of issues that the feds and the states wanted
answers to before they would commit to funding. It's as simple as that, and some of them are quite
honestly valid questions, like, how much does it cost? How many people are you going to transport?
You know the myriad of...what's the service going to look like?
So, again, I'll be the first to say that I wish it could be a more efficient process.
But it is what it is. The good news is that we're past the study phase,
we're into construction. This project right now is viewed in Washington, and in the states' capitols, as
a project that's underway; it's not a question on the drawing boards; it's not theoretical. It's funded.
It's under construction and and like most of these projects around the country it will be done in phases.
The feds or anyone don't just write you a check and say here's the check, go build it and tell us what it's done.
These projects are large. They require large sums of money.
And they're done in phases. And that's not even just transit projects. Highway projects and other projects, major
transportation infrastructure projects, are done on that basis in this country, and that's the way it is basically.
It would be nice if it was
faster and more efficient, but that's the way it is
across the board. So, we're not the only one that have been plagued with
years and years of studies. Like I said the good news is we're past the study phase and basically we are now seeking
funding for construction,
which is underway on the first seven miles, and engineering, and you need both. You can't construct a project
without having engineering in place,
obviously to bid the project out, to have the proper specs, to meet federal and state requirements, to meet all the other
permitting, other issues you need to do to build.
And that's the rules of the game, and that's what's out there if you want to complete the project.
So I guess in a nutshell, if you don't have the studies, if you don't have the engineering done,
you're not going to build a project, and that's the nature of federal, state, and local
funding for transportation projects.
Again, the good news is
we're underway. It's an established
project with the FTA, the Federal Transit Administration,
which is the entity in Washington where the majority of the funding is coming from.
You have to live by their rules, their guidelines, their regulations, if you want the money,
and if you want the money to continue to flow. So,
that's basically where we're at.
Very specifically,
the next major goal is once the Andover section is completed is to address,
really, the main link in the chain, and that's the 21 miles between Andover and the Water Gap...
and I should say the Delaware River.
That will be basically the next major phase of funding.
We are now seeking,
just like we did for the first seven miles, construction monies and engineering monies, to complete that
segment and get the 21 miles back and, thereby, have the entire Cut-Off put back.
We believe and we're very optimistic, quite honestly, because there are some very important things happening, not only just from
from a public perspective, but from a political perspective, which is very important in projects of this nature.
And that is that in Pennsylvania
we've got very, very good support from our Congressman Cartwright, who represents Northeast Pennsylvania,
is a true advocate of the project.
He has stated, as such, he has made it one of his priority top three projects that he's supporting and going after in his district.
And he has been named to the House
Appropriations Committee in Washington, which is a very important committee in terms of funding.
As important in New Jersey,
the
main proponent and advocate of the first seven miles and the 69 million, which has already been acquired
for the first seven miles, is Congressman Frelinghuysen,
who also is on the House Appropriations Committee. But a little more importantly,
he has just been appointed the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.
So, you have the two congressmen in the House in Washington
who have made this project one of their priorities.
They're true advocates of the project.
That speaks for itself. It's a very important
aligning of the stars, if you will, or however you want to couch it, but a very important aspect of
seeking funding and to advance the project.
Obviously, there's other changes in New Jersey with the governorship, Governor Murphy, and
other positions that
hopefully will align with the concept of moving the funding for this next phase, the 21 miles, forward.
On the broader scope, from a political perspective, there is
serious talk in Washington of
a major
infrastructure funding bill
next year, during 2018,
that would address many of the infrastructure needs that are desperately needed across this country, and all modes of transportation.
Again, talking about the stars, hopefully,
the timing of that could not be much better because we haven't had a major federal transportation
infrastructure focus and/or funding bill
in many years.
So that hopefully will tie in
with the support we now have.
In Pennsylvania we also have support from Senator Casey who's, of course, from the Scranton area,
and has been an advocate of the project all along.
And
again, we can count on a kind of a bi-state support for a bi-state project because that's what this is: this is a bi-state project.
And again, it's something we mentioned before, the bi-state nature of this.
Again, it's a bi-state project. Usually that makes it a little bit more complex to
do one of these projects, but we certainly have enough examples of bi-state rail, heavy rail, transportation
operations in our area.
We've previously talked about the Port Jervis trains--the Hoboken to Port Jervis trains--
but out of the New York City area, metropolitan area, you've got all kinds of bi-state
relationships and agreements in place. For example, any of the services up to Connecticut, and the other surrounding states. So,
we're not inventing the wheel here. We don't want to reinvent the wheel; we know the wheel's there. We're basically
designing this, from a funding perspective, to fit in with what's out there, what's successful, and what's working in the commuter
operations in the New York Region, the New York City Region.
So, with that is a little bit of a background of optimism going forward,
we feel pretty confident.
CHUCK: Okay, here we go, off to Andover.
Lake Hopatcong is the first station east of Port Morris, and the station was actually built,
technically, as part of the the Cut-Off project.
Two tracks here, the left track is the
main line which goes to Hackettstown, actually goes all the way as far as Phillipsburg, as a matter of fact.
And the right
track actually goes into Port Morris Yard.
You can see Port Morris Tower coming up.
The replacement of the Cut-Off
actually will hook in or switch in
somewhere approximately...we are coming up to that spot.
The switch that they will use, the prefabricated switch, concrete ties, and such,
is off to the side, and we will be passing it in a
few seconds here.
You can see that things are starting to line up here.
The Cut-Off would go straight; it doesn't go straight now. There's a temporary arrangement
of tracks. You can see the concrete switch ties off to the right here. They're
buried in the snow.
But presumably, they would be put into place over here right on the left.
And then the permanent track would go straight and
come close to where the tower is and to the right of the signal.
You can see Port Morris Yard off to the left.
And we're basically on the right-of-way of the Cut-Off now.
In 1911 this was all
opened with four tracks coming in here. At least at this point the plan is to have one track.
And
we'll show you where the wye track will come in a little bit on the other side.
Now there's this temporary setup here that's been established.
You can see that the track for the Cut-Off-- it's not really the Cut-Off--but it's really a temporary
track that's been set up to tie into the Cut-Off
comes across and then
once the
wooden ties and
the--
you can see that the concrete ties will begin--that'll be, basically, the permanent
Cut-Off, if you will.
Now for the longest time, there were actually electric trains that were being stored here; those have been
moved away.
They were
presumably going for scrap, and there's still some of these electric locomotives, the ALPs,
the ALP-44s, I guess they are, and
you can see the track, literally the
continuously-welded rail that's here,
and that's been laid out.
and that's
eventually going to be pulled out
and will be used for the seven and a half miles to
Andover.
If you look off to the left, you just begin to start seeing where the wye track will be coming in.
We're crossing over approximately where the Morris Canal crossed.
I think if in fact we may even be beyond it.
But the Morris Canal crossed here, underneath the Cut-Off, and that bridge was removed.
Presumably the Lackawanna knew that that was not going to be a
permanent
type of arrangement.
You can see the concrete ties coming up.
We're coming up on the
Center Street road crossing, the bridge.
And the wye track, where the wye track would be is coming up.
Coming off the left...
To the left of these ties....
And the wye track will
join in with the main line at some point, I'm not exactly clear where that would be.
But it'd be somewhere over here.
You can see the locomotives. At some point they will leave.
They're not going to be used for anything except for scrap, but at some point they
will be pulled out and
this line will be open for use.
That's the Musconetcong River we just crossed over.
Our next point of interest, which will be coming up in a little bit, will be West Port Morris, the original West Port Morris.
This is where the line goes through a cut.
We're actually on a roughly half a percent downhill grade at this point.
Now this section was the first built, or rebuilt, and
was put into place for the delivery of the continuously-welded rail, which we saw back there.
This was originally still three tracks at this point.
You can see that there's still some continuously-welded rail here. I think this is about where it ends.
Off to the far left is Lake Musconetcong.
It's actually pretty big. The Morris Canal crossed in the middle of the lake.
You see where the last remaining telephone poles, or telegraph poles, which
at this point in time, or this area, are still on the
north side of the right-of-way. For most of the cutoff
they're on the south side of the
right-of-way. So at some point they crossed over.
Not precisely sure where that takes place, but it does, they do cross over at some point, or did cross over.
Now we're nearing where the original West Port Morris was located.
This is where it went from three tracks to two tracks.
And in the distance you can see the 602 grade crossing.
And that grade crossing will actually be equipped with what they call quad gates,
and will allow for it to be a quiet zone. So, in other words, the trains don't have to blow their horn
when they're approaching it.
That makes it more
friendly to the neighborhood and
also is a safety measure so that instead of one gate each side there are four gates
which block both sides of the
road and that would stop anyone from--
and why someone would do this--but sometimes this happens, people decide to try to go around a gate and
when you have four gates you can't do that.
This is the old 602 here, crossing over the bridge here.
That's been abandoned since 1990.
And this is where 602, Route 602, Sussex County Road 602, was
rebuilt and moved.
OK, shortly we should be coming up on...in fact, there it is...
Milepost 47. They're not too many mileposts that are left at this point.
I'm afraid, they'd end up as souvenirs, unfortunately, but that's just the way it is.
Now they're actually three different
disconnected sections of the Cut-Off. In other words, where there's track, and then there are breaks in-between where there are no tracks.
For a while there were actually temporary tracks here that were on wooden ties.
They were removed at some point. I'm going to say back in 2012, but they were here for a little bit.
And then here we have the second section, I'll call it. It starts up where we have
track that's been laid.
This is
permanent track.
And as you can tell there was room for two tracks here. There will be only one track here for the foreseeable future.
The first section that we went down is about
roughly a mile and a quarter of track; that's a guess.
Then there's this break,
maybe a quarter-mile or a little bit more.
And then there's this section which is about a half a mile long.
Maybe longer.
And this is in a cut as well.
You get a sense that there's cuts and fills and that's the way the Cut-Off was built. And
when the Cut-Off was built it was built
with the intent of trying
to balance the cuts and fills. In other words, if you have a
cut,
like here, you have to dig out or blast out material:
rock and gravel and dirt and whatnot,
that that material would be removed and put on a fill, which would be
somewhere nearby,
not too far because it's not economical or
practical. And we're talking now over a hundred years ago, so it was even less practical in those days
to try to
move vast amounts of fill material for long distances.
So you try to minimize that as best you could.
But in this section here you can see
it continues to be a cut. It's actually not a real, real, real deep cut, but it's
fairly lengthy. You
can see the track here where it looks like it's broken, and it's actually just the end of a section.
My guess is that they
don't want people to bring their speeders. In other words, these little track cars that you can ride on on track.
And what happens is if you
don't have a continuous piece of track, probably people aren't going to do that.
Don't know also that if
because the track has been here for a while, they anticipated that it would be a while
before it would be used.
Don't know if with that heat and cold
that it makes more sense not to
do that welding at that point and wait until the
full construction kicks in,
which we're hoping is going to be sometime later this year. We'll see.
We have our fingers are crossed.
And if that's the case then,
they'll come back here and finish the job, so to speak. There's still some work that has to be done.
Just because the tracks have been laid doesn't mean that that's the last thing. Probably some more ballast, the rock, the
gravel, the large pieces of rock,
will still need to be,
some more of that will need to be laid down.
And you see we've now reached the end here of that section, that's section number two.
We'll be coming up on
Sussex County 605.
There actually are
two bridges now.
There's this first bridge we see, which is the new 605.
And then there's the old 605 which will be beyond it.
This, historically, has been a wet section since there's been
a lack of maintenance of the
ditches on both sides of the right-of-way.
See off to the right there's a wall. Before it there's a ditch, and
the right-of-way itself is wet here. Looking back at old maps
It's apparent that there might have been
potentially a
stream that was opened up that wasn't originally there. In other words, when they were surveying the line, when it was,
shall we say, just
plain land, before they actually started
excavating for the right-of-way, that there was a
stream that they somehow opened up, and that's what we see here somehow and that the lack of the channels being
maintained causes the water now to be over the right-of-way.
So this is the new 605, opened up about 10 years ago. You see the 1911 version, which has been restored;
it's not really used.
It's technically part of a
trail, but it doesn't really get a lot of use.
When there were some environmental issues
off to the side here, not involving the Cut-Off per se,
they actually had a
trailer that was sitting on top of the old 605 bridge.
You can't drive over it now. It's as I said, it's part of a trail so it's really not
accessible. You can walk over it, however.
Okay, so now we're in
Waltz & Reese Cut and
this is one of those 70 mile-an-hour curves.
You can see all the water that's
coming across here.
This is probably--and I'm not an engineer so I shouldn't be the one saying this--but
this probably is not something that requires a lot of work to fix even though it looks like it's bad. But if
you look at old photos,
and I mean photos from the time when the railroad was in operation back in the seventies, this
is all dry and they just had the channels on each side so that the Lackawanna and the Erie Lackawanna,
and I guess Conrail as well later on,
it was not really an issue per se. It was just water and was
something that
was
managed. But the issue here is that
without any kind of management
you have this particular water issue. And at some point
we'll get down here where there's actually, I wouldn't call it a drain, but like a culvert
that goes off and then
the right-of-way will be pretty much dry because there's no source of water.
But this is one of the places which I guess would have been considered wetlands by the
DEP, and I believe that's the reason why there's no track here right now.
This has been approved so
this doesn't have to be addressed--it'll be fixed--but there aren't additional environmental permits that are going to be required
to address this.
It's already been specified that they
just have to re-channel the water here. And you can see we're actually going down a little bit of a stream
as we go westbound. In the distance,
we're actually coming up to the third section of the Cut-Off, third section of the rebuilt portion of the Cut-Off, and
that section goes about two miles.
See, the water is gonna just just run off to the side here at some point.
And because of the snow and
it's been fairly wet, wet in the sense that has been a lot of precipitation,
it's actually flowing pretty well at this point.
Okay, now we're coming up on the final section, at least that's been
re-tracked.
And this is actually the West Port Morris in the
Erie Lackawanna years, or after 1958 this went from two tracks down to one here because when the
Cut-Off was single tracked
the one track was removed. Actually,
the westbound track which is on our right was actually removed, and the eastbound track was retained, which is where we are now.
New Jersey Transit has decided to
reverse that and now they've put
the track, the first or new track, on to the westbound
part of the right-of-way, and we're actually traveling on the eastbound
part of the right-a-way, although, of course, we're going westbound.
And we'll be coming up to what is called
Roseville Siding, where there was a Roseville Siding. There was actually
both east and west sidings that were here.
You can see that the right-of-way is still relatively narrow.
But it'll expand out at some point.
I'll point out something that's probably obvious for those you're watching the video: that
there are lots of ruts on the right-of-way,
caused by ATVs and such,
basically digging out sections so that you don't have a flat right-of-way, unfortunately
anymore, as was the case when they first started doing work on the Cut-Off here. This was nice
gravel and was flat.
And some sections are still that way, but some sections can be fairly
dug out, so it could be a little bit of a challenge. We're doing the best we can under these circumstances.
Okay, so you can see now we have a
track, and we're coming up to another curve here. So this is what in a previous episode I referred to as the curvy section of the Cut-Off.
I think this is just the beginning of where
Roseville
Siding or sidings were.
That begs the question about Roseville Tunnel. We'll come up on Roseville Tunnel, but it's not here.
But it's actually
the closest landmark, I guess you could say, to this location.
This siding
went out pretty early,
somewhere in the early 30s, '32 or '33, somewhere in there.
Apparently,
it didn't get its original use as much as it might have been intended to be used:
eastbound and westbound trains would stop here waiting for other trains to go through probably, freights waiting for passenger trains.
I'm told by Bob Bahrs,
our friend from Erie Lackawanna days;
he also worked for Conrail and was one of the
crew members on the last rail train that pulled up the tracks on the Cut-Off.
He said that
he talked to someone who said that they actually used the eastbound
track for storage out of Port Morris,
and then at some point,
I guess as you get to the Depression, in the early 30s, they just pulled up the siding. It just wasn't used anymore.
You can see it's much wider now, so this is an area where there's at least three, if not, four tracks,
two of which are sidings, however,
Off to the right, a very large cliff. It would have been interesting
if you're in the right location, one of those--
not that you'd see this anymore or hear this anymore--but
imagine a
loud either steam locomotive or
diesel, or diesels, coming up this grade. It's still a little bit of a grade here that we have.
That reverberating off of that cliff there, which is actually quite substantial.
It actually, I think, guided the way the line was built because they didn't want to necessarily have to take down that particular...
to go through that, so it made more sense that the topography would have dictated that they would have gone
off on this side here, around that particular cliff. I'll call it a cliff; it's actually more than just a cliff. It's
sizable piece of rock that goes beyond, behind that.
So this is still Roseville,
what would have been Roseville Siding. Roseville Siding was about a mile in each direction.
There was a little bit of overlap that occurred.
I always think of this is as perhaps the most isolated section of the Cut-Off. You might some of the places
west and, yeah, there may be one or two I can think of in that
the area of, maybe,
Cedar Lake and so forth but they're actually closer to civilization than you may realize. But this here is actually,
there's really nothing around it, and it's very
difficult to get in here. I mean you can walk in here, of course, but it's not convenient to try to
go in here. And at some point, when they're trains running again
this will probably not be one of the most photographed areas because
people who take photographs of trains tend not to want to trek in long distances. But this is an interesting spot.
But at this point,
I can guarantee you most likely that there won't be as many photographs taken from here, just because
from 605, which we passed, is
the closest
crossroad behind us, and
the nearest cross road ahead of us is still quite a ways ahead of us.
So we continue on...
We can see that
the welded rail continues.
And the curve that we're coming up to
is actually the last curve we will have until almost Andover. There's actually a nice long straight, or tangent, section
that includes the part that goes through Roseville Tunnel.
We're actually on a sizable fill here, looking down both sides.
We're just about around to Milepost 49, right now 49.1, or so.
So we're not quite halfway to Andover at this point in time.
And see now the right-of-way narrows
quite, I'll say dramatically, but quite noticeably, and we're now down to almost a point where there would have been two tracks.
Presumably, this was the end of
the eastbound section of Roseville Siding.
We're almost to the point where it's back to the normal width of a right-of-way.
The tracks will go around this curve.
And they're going to end, that much I can tell you,
before we get to Lake Lackawanna, which is one of the the scenic highlights.
This is a scenic line.
And from end to end it has it
certainly has its share of
scenic spots, and there's several that are here on the
section between Port Morris and Andover. Just passing by a telephone pole. Now it's on the left hand side, so somewhere between here and
back where we saw the telephone pole on the north side of the right-of-way,
the lines crossed over.
Another two degree curve, which would permit seventy miles an hour.
And this fill continues.
To our right, up the hill, actually is the
Sussex County Library, one of the branches of it, the Byram branch. This would be Byram Township we're in right now.
Very tall fill.
I don't want to estimate how tall it is at this point, but it is significantly tall.
As we go around the curve.
New Jersey Transit has cleared everything off.
Not
just laid track but, of course, before doing that they had to clear away
trees,
or any kind of like scrub or stuff like that. You see a little bit that's grown back in the meantime. It's been
close to six years since any kind of real work has been done here.
This track here was placed in
2012, so it'll give you an idea, we're now in 2018, so it's
roughly six years.
And now coming up to the end of the track, and there's no track beyond this at this point.
This goes into what is basically
an empty right-of-way, and there's been no clearing here either. In other words, at this point,
this is as far as New Jersey Transit had cleared in anticipation of laying track.
Now it looks like we're probably gonna go back on to
what was the westbound track, because the eastbound track isn't here but the
roadbed is still here. You have ties and ballast.
Coming up
is what is considered to be Lubber Run Fill.
Lubber's Run, which is actually the name of a stream. It used to be called Lubber Run; somehow it got changed.
I mean you look at old photographs for the Lackawanna, it's called Lubberr Run.
Lubber is kind of a disparaging term for, I think, Irish people.
It's not
not something you hear much anymore, but like landlubber or something like that. But in any case it was it was a term that
and they named the
stream that went through here
Lubber Run. At some point--don't know when that actually took place--but when they
built the Cut-Off, and then sometime thereafter
they dammed
Lubbers Run or Lubber Run and
they created what is now Lake Lackawanna, which is off to the left here.
Very pretty spot, a fairly large lake as a matter fact, too. There's actually a a dam that's underneath,
maybe on the far right hand side of the fill,
underneath the Cut-Off.
And
that retains some of the water in the lake beside us--the right hand side. But the left hand side is called
Lake Lackawanna.
I'm not sure if the right side has a name or not, but twe might need to consider that part of Lake Lackawanna,
but there's a dam in-between, so I'm suspecting that that isn't the case.
So, now we're on a tangent or straight track
all the way until we reach the curve at Andover station.
So right now we're roughly at Milepost 50.
As you can see, there are places where trees literally are growing up in between the ties.
The Cut-Off's tracks were lifted in
1984, so that tree has had 34 years at this point to grow almost.
It's actually surprising there aren't more trees that are
growing up in between the ties.
But it seems like it depends on the area; some places you see a lot more, and in this area
it's not really that bad. It probably is not a major issue that when they do
the clearing.
The equipment, I'm sure that this is not a hindrance, but it just means iit has to be done.
And they will clear back...
there must be specification as to how far they have to clear back from the right-of-way.
So what we see now is not what we will see
when they start laying track again,. They will have to
clear off this section.
Actually they'll have to clear off everything from
Lake Lackawanna west.
Roseville Tunnel, which we'll get to talk about separately because it's literally its own project.
The whole
project is 69 million dollars, but
Roseville Tunnel is its own separate
appropriation and the actual
project and how it has to be handled and the timelines and all that kind of stuff,
It's a separate project.
Okay, now we're going, we're coming off of Lubber Run Fill.
And we're just passing what would have been a signal, the base of a signal here.
May not look like it's straight, but this is a straight piece of track, or would be a straight piece of track.
A giant cut, actually, at least on the north side, the right side, here.
I
would
point out that when the line is reactivated this would be a very good spot to get some
interesting shots of trains
coming with Lake Lackawanna in the background, which is off to our left right now; we're leaving that behind.
We should be coming up to..we'll see how good a view we get of Wolf Lake.
This is a
perhaps one of the most
scenic parts of the Cut-Off.
And you can see Wolf Lake off to the left.
Here we are near Wolf Lake. We're roughly at Milepost 51 on the Cut-Off.
You can see Wolf Lake off to the left here, the south side of the right-of-way.
We've encountered a tree, so we've gone as far as we possibly can
using our car. So, the rest of the way we're actually going to walk it.
We will intermittently do these interviews, but the rest of the time
we're going to actually use a device called a GoPro, which will allow us to capture our walking
along the way.
Did promise that we would go from end to end.
Although also did
mention that there was a possibility we might run into problems and, well,
lo and behold we did.
We're now going to proceed westbound, and we'll continue on.
This is a straight piece of
railroad all the way from
the curve near Lake Lackawanna,
all the way through Roseville Tunnel and
almost to when we get to Andover do we actually hit a curve. So, in any case,
off we go on our trek westbound on the Cut-Off. Our
next stop will be somewhere along the way on our way to Andover.
LARISSA: Recording. CHUCK: Okay.
And we talked about there being a curvy section on the Cut-Off, well, here's the lake section of the Cut-Off.
Wolf Lake.
Next, we're going to come up on some ponds.
Before we get to the tunnel we'll have Wright Pond,
which is we on our right. Remember that's on the north side of the Cut-Off.
On the south side will be ponds that I don't know that they have any particular name attached to them.
Roseville Road crosses
the Cut-Off three different times.
As we go westbound this is the first time it actually crosses under the Cut-Off.
It'll wrap around
the north side of the Cut-Off and come back and dip under again.
And then scoots around
Roseville Tunnel and then will cross a third time west of Roseville Tunnel on a bridge.
So, the first two crossings are underpasses; the third one is on an overhead bridge.
Now we have ponds on both sides of the right-of-way.
Okay, we are now on Wharton Fill. Actually, we've been on Wharton Fill for a little bit, and
we're coming up to where Roseville Road crosses under the Cut-Off a second time.
In the distance on the right is going to be Wright Pond, and
not too far ahead of us is Roseville Tunnel.
Now, Wharton Fill was actually named not for a person or a family, but rather a steel company.
This area here
was
used for many years for iron mining,
and,
well, that was abandoned before the Cut-Off was built.
The Wharton Steel Company still owned the property for which this section and this fill
went.
And as at this point we're crossing over
Roseville Road,
the ponds on the south side, and
then,
on the north side, Wright Pond,
as you can see through the trees.
Now, if you look at early photos,
photos taken during the time of construction of the Cut-Off,
Wright Pond is here.
But the ponds on the other side of the right-of-way are not here. And, in fact,
they're not here for quite some time. So, at some point they start to fill up with water,
but not immediately.
We're not really sure how long it took, maybe ten years or so. We've seen photos from the
what appear to be the late teens or early 20s, and there sre still no ponds on the south side here.
And as we approach Roseville Tunnel,
I'll point out that there were
alternative proposals to actually
shunt around Roseville
Hill, I'll call it, and not actually go through it. The plan was originally to build a cut. The tunnel
became a necessity about a year into construction and
if you were to look back, which you can't really see too well from this perspective,
but the top of the tunnel up above on the hill has been
significantly cut back.
That took about a year to get that far and
because of the nature of the rock
the
Idea of a cut was abandoned and a tunnel was substituted instead.
Now this section here for about 200 feet from the tunnel east will be
treated by New Jersey Transit, treated in the sense that there will have to be some sort of
rockfall type of prevention installed, and then the tunnel itself is going to be trimmed back
fifteen or more feet. The tunnel is a thousand and twenty four feet long.
OK, we've stopped in Roseville Tunnel.
Now the tunnel itself, as you can see, is just
rock that's been
blasted away or however they've removed the rock to create the tunnel.
This is going to receive a
concrete lining, and as we move down
farther into the tunnel we'll actually see where there is a concrete lining that was installed many years ago,
presumably because there are issues with
water and ice. Even now you can hear the drip-drip-drip.
In our episode about Roseville Tunnel,
we looked at the side of the front of the tunnel and
where you could see the rods have been actually placed down into the tunnel for the blasting.
Now in terms of New Jersey Transit, in addition to the lining, they're going to create
channels or somehow a
way for water to be channeled out of the tunnel.
When we get to the other side of the tunnel, there's significant problems with water and
ice, as there would be during the wintertime.
There's going to be lighting that will be installed in here.
There will also be a system that will allow the trains to maintain
communication with their home base over radio, because inside of a tunnel you may actually lose that signal temporarily.
So that'll be here. And
in addition to that side where I talked about behind the photographer right now where there's
200 feet or so of area where the rocks will have to be trimmed back and some kind of protection put up.
That issue is far more significant when we get to the other side, the west
portal of the tunnel go and look at Colby Cut.
So that's a broad overview of what's going to be happening here in Roseville Tunnel.
This will be a two-year project. So, in other words, when this project starts the contractor will have two years to complete the
project.
And so that's what might be called the critical path for this project. If you know
project
management type of speak, this particular project
will drive as to when the total project can be finished, because the rest of the project,
as we've seen where we've been walking along or driving along, there are tracks in some places and not in others.
The clearing is not going to be that significant of an issue; that could be done.
I'm sure that some of you know about the Indiana bat, and there's a restriction in terms of clearing; in other words, taking trees and brush out
between April and
the end of October of each year.
That's considered the mating season of the Indiana bat, which is an endangered species.
And even though its namesake implies that it's from Indiana, there is a little bit
of the species that lives in northwestern New Jersey; it's really the far outer reach of the
habitat of the
Indiana bat.
But, nevertheless, it still
theoretically could be here. Not in the tunnel, because they're not gonna
live in a tunnel. They'll
live in a cave and a cave only has one entrance, not two entrances like it a tunnel does.
But their mating actually occurs in the trees, so, therefore,
there's a restriction during the mating season, though, of tearing down trees. So that would have to happen--
this being 2018--would have to actually happen
sometime starting in November of this year. Hopefully all that lines up and that's when it starts. Actually what's left probably--
we'll be optimistic--probably can be done on those sections, which remain which have not been touched,
that might be able to be done over the next wintertime, until the next,
beginning of next April, April that will be of 2019.
So now we're going to proceed further west, we're going to take a look inside through the tunnel and then we'll
go out into Colby Cut and take a look at that area,
which will also be part of this project. In other words, Roseville Tunnel is the project, was separately funded;
all the
environmental permits have been approved.
But not only is the tunnel the project,
but also, as I mentioned, the two hundred feet east of the tunnel, and then for eight thousand feet--
which is basically all the way to Andover Station--
that is also included in this total project.
Now here's ice.
There's a big piece of ice and there's water coming through the tunnel as we
would expect.
Tunnels are porous and
are generally a problem in terms of
railroading, although they often are a necessity, but if they can be eliminated
that's usually desirable to do so. In this case it wasn't
an option. This is an
historic corridor, the Cut-Off is an historic corridor.
So, there's a certain degree of preservation that has to take place
along the line.
There are certain limits. You can put in continuously welded rail; you don't necessarily have to use rail that was
considered state-of-the-art in 1911 when the Cut-Off was being completed.
So there are allowances in terms of what is considered historic
preservation. However,
in the case of the tunnel the
actual outside entrances of the tunnel are going to be preserved as they are.
Or at least they will look natural.
Although, as I mentioned, there will be a certain
amount of removal of material. As
far as I'm aware. I believe--I don't know this for sure--
but I believe the removal of
X number of feet of
tunnel
would be to bring the tunnel under a thousand feet,
which would
make it possible to not have to have a vent
installed in the tunnel.
I believe the thousand foot rule is where it applies, and
at a thousand-twenty-four-feet, it's just a little bit above that, of course.
Now, we're roughly in the center of the tunnel right now, and in the distance you can see
the stalagtites--the ice--and here's a--I wouldn't call it a stalagmite--
but it's like a pile of ice. Now, this was a problem. It was known at the time
when the Cut-Off was being run,
depending on
the wetness of the year and how cold it was, ice could be a significant problem in the tunnel.
But apparently was
particularly bad
on the Colby Cut side of the tunnel, which is
the western portal side, what we're coming up to now.
You can see that...
actually coming up to where they installed a concrete lining, presumably to
somehow mitigate the problem with water and ice,
if only perhaps to channel the water down to the sides of the tunnel away from the tracks and then
that water would be channeled out of the tunnel out through drainage ditches.
We're just coming up on the
concrete. We have to be very careful here because we're just coming up on a
big iceberg, almost.
The ice is particularly bad.
So here we are...this is
the beginning of the
short section that is lined with concrete. And,
unfortunately, that has failed because
the water's coming through profusely.
And so this will be a part of the tunnel that no doubt is going to require probably the most amount of attention.
Here's a stalagtite.
My gosh, it must be close to ten feet long. That's a guess. Maybe that's eight feet. But still.
I wouldn't want to be under that when it fell.
Careful there...we have ties that are still here...that's the old eastbound track.
And now we're reaching...we're almost to the portal, but we're now at the end of
the concrete section.
We can briefly look back.
It looks like an entranceway here where they
put in,
I guess, maybe a hundred or more feet, not much more than a hundred feet
of concrete lining.
Now the amazing thing--and I'm going to talk about New Jersey Transit in terms of what's going on with delays but if--
everything works out
this may be the last time anyone's going to be getting winter photos with all these
really quite spectacular
stalagtites here of ice,
because, presumably, this is going to be all cordoned-off and will be under construction for two years.
Just got a piece of a stalagtite.
Stalagtites are in caves.
You would see them hanging down. Stalagmites are those which actually form from the base up. I can't imagine getting
hit by anything like this.
Okay, we're now in Colby Cut.
And at one time there were rock
fall detectors that were here. The remnants of that
system...you can see the
wiring or is actually fencing...and here's one...
probably maybe one of the few that are left: a pole which supported the
rockslide detector, which would actually set the
signals to red and prevent the train from coming through.
Strangely enough the
southside, even though it looks almost identical
to the northside, never had rockslide detection.
For some reason, maybe it wasn't thought to be an issue.
But this side definitely did.
And it continued for quite a distance, as a matter of fact.
And all of this is going to require some sort of
protective type of meshing or
fencing or some sort of a way to protect from
the similar problem that has happened in the past.
As you can see water is a big problem here...we can either go left or we can go right.
I'm going to choose to go on to the rail right-of-way.
The drainage ditch off to the left, that's going to have to be fixed. There's actually a place over here that
is blocked; there was a landslide of some sort years ago.
That causes the water to back up. There's water over here as well, but these are basically
gullies that have developed because of the ATVs.
Now we'll just turn around and
look back. Colby cut. Another
rockslide,
part of a rockslide detection system.
Colby Cut. If you look
at the top of the tunnel you can see where the top ends. Well, actually,
that's been chopped down a good 40 plus feet.
So imagine that
before this was built, before this was
blasted out, that
the top of the tunnel, what is now a tunnel, was much taller. There was much more rock there.
And here the rockslide detection continues.
One of the key problems of
abandoning a railroad is that maintenance--not only are the tracks taken away--but the maintenance of the right-of-way
ceases to occur.
Not only do you get vegetation that grows,
but you also get places where the drainage system no longer functions as it once did.
So as concerning as this may look,
this is probably not as difficult a job as it may seem,
particularly if you consider that the right-of-way functioned well with
relatively primitive technology for
the better part of three-quarters of a century.
So I'm sure that the engineers,
who have planned how this will be fixed, have been able to figure that part out. I don't think it will be that difficult.
And here's where it's been blocked. Right here.
The channel over here...the waters, you know that
this is what happens with lack of maintenance, you get a
rockslide.
It certainly does occur on this side, and then
you end up with water.
Also end up with ATVs.
Should we ford the river here?
Now a little bit of truth in advertising...we had the option...I'll go around here...
We had the option of potentially using an ATV to do this.
Which we know would be faster, although
chances are
we wouldn't stay as dry as we are right now.
We wouldn't be getting the same amount of exercise.
You probably really couldn't talk over
the drone of the ATV.
Although some perhaps in our audience would probably prefer that they hear the drone of the engine rather than the drone of
Chuck Walsh,
but that was the choice that was made.
As you can see we're still in the wet section of the Cut-Off.
More rock slide detection.
Now, the rockslide detection dates back to roughly about 1950.
After the rockslide in Armstrong Cut, which closed the line for about a month--
Armstrong Cut is the cut just west of Johnsonburg Station--
that particular rockslide in Armstrong Cut occured
in 1941.
After that, the Lackawanna Railroad kind of freaked-out, one would think, and decided that
this was also needed here, some kind of protection was needed here, in the off chance that
a massive rockslide would occur here and shut the line down.
So what they did was they posted a
watchman.
We're coming up on,
looks like a signal type of building,
a little shed of some sort.
But I believe that's the same location as a watchman's shanty.
A watchman
lasted at least about ten years.
And maybe they decided that
it was cheaper to have an automatic system than to pay someone
to be here 24/7
watching for a small possibility that a rockslide might occur.
I should have pointed out--and it's too late now because we're on this side of the tunnel--
but
on the other side of the tunnel
they actually had--
and I believe it was on the south side of the right-of-way--
a short
siding--that was not Roseville Siding--but there was a siding just for the tunnel, and for a while they actually stored a
car that the men could stand on and could work on the tunnel.
And at some point that was torn out, but it was there for quite some time. You see the
the shed.
It's not a shanty. The original shanty, I believe, was made out of wood. We'll show a photo of that.
Now you can see we're coming up on Roseville Road again. This is the new bridge.
This bridge was
replaced within the last year and opened within the last year, actually August I believe of 2017, to be exact.
And replaced the original 1911 bridge.
The former bridge had a
strange anomaly attached to it that--
and this came out in an
accident investigation
for a freight train that
rear-ended another
freight train just on the other side, the east side, of Roseville Tunnel. The
second freight was coming this way and
it ran through two different red lights; there was negligence on the part of the
engineer, who was claiming that
he was eating breakfast or something. It was 6:30 in the morning.
But the anomaly that was detected was that the old bridge
would partially obstruct
the view
of the signal
that would have been right near where the the shanty was, which you can't really see now.
But,
in those days it was a semaphore and because the semaphore would have been in a certain position--
it doesn't make any sense to me; it usually be in a down position, in which case you'd be more likely to see it--
but they found that that bridge over here, the old one,
actually obstructed partially that view.
Something they never considered when they built the Cut-Off and put the signals in.
That shouldn't really be an issue here.
We're not exactly sure what New Jersey Transit's going to do about signaling. They might have what they call lineside signals: in other words
the red-green-yellow
line side which you'd see
with your Lionel Train set. Or they may only have what they call cab signals, which are only visible to the engineer.
And we don't know if this line is going to be equipped with positive train control
which
basically
increases the capacity, but also increases the safety of
train operation. We'll see. That's something that will emerge over time.
You can see the 2017 on the side of the bridge. The bridge is actually officially
considered to be C-17,
C as in Charlie 17,
in Sussex County.
And from here,
well, you couldn't see it now, but when all this is cleared out--because these trees got to go, they have to be
cleared out at least to a certain specification--
there should be no problem seeing Roseville Tunnel from here.
We're still on a tangent piece of track so this tangent or straight track, if you will,
started all the way back at Lake Lackawanna,
and it's still going.
And as we get around the curve,
we will have arrived at
Andover Station stop.
And now we're just at the far end of Colby Cut.
Mr. Colby actually proposed a station,
not
Andover, where it will be,
but a station somewhere around here. I don't know exactly where it would have been.
Presumably, it would have been on his property so he could have collected a fee for it being on his property.
And Colby actually didn't own all of Colby Cut. This whole cut. There actually a couple different
owners, but
for simplicity's sake the entire cut has
come to be known as Colby Cut,
even though,
technically speaking,
there were other
owners that had parts of the cut named after them.
And you'd need to go back to old maps or look at the photos that were taken at the time to
be able to figure out who those
owners were.
But Colby is the most enduring as it turns out.
Maybe the alliterative Colby Cut is maybe why it stuck, or maybe because Mr. Colby was a
kind of a pain in the neck to
President Truesdale.
We really don't know. But
whatever the case may be
in
common usage this is referred to as Colby Cut.
You can see there is actually some
mitigation that's been done here to prevent any kind of rockfall
off of this
small hill here.
This dates back at least to the Erie Lackawanna days one would think: sixties or seventies.
Could be even longer for all we know.
Now at this point we are somewhere between Milepost 52 and Milepost 53.
The station is actually at approximately Milepost 53.
And when I say the station,
you'll have to use your imagination, but
there's going to be
a significant amount of work that will have to be done at the station site.
You can see over here that the drainage channels are working very nicely.
The right-of-way, except for what you would see here, which if you had
ballast and a
regular railroad roadbed on top of it, you would not see this water, so it would not be an issue.
Have to realize that water is
always going to be there depending on how wet it is.
I mean that makes sense, depending on how wet it is--if you have a dry year you're not going to have any water--
but that water may be down here, but that's why
railroads put anywhere between three, four, or more feet of ballast
and that keeps where the
ties and the track above that area
that's wet.
So even if there's water down below here
the
track bed is above that.
Now in the distance you see that we're just about to enter the curve,
the final curve, of the 7.3 miles
from Port Morris to
Andover.
Another two degree curve, 70 miles an hour.
It begs the question, if on the straight track would the trains be permitted to go faster?
My understanding is they won't do that, at least on this section.
They'll probably restrict the trains to 70 miles an hour.
But we'll find out.
This section,
with the exception of Roseville Tunnel, which was 70 miles an hour
throughout the years,
with a couple of exceptions,
depending on the year and the timetable--sometimes the speed limits went up and down--but at its maximum, it was 70 miles an hour.
But the rest of the trackage on this
piece of tangent track was as high as 80 miles an hour.
As would presumably be the case west of Andover, which is then an even longer
piece of tangent track. And once you get past Andover
and go on to the Pequest Fill,
there is a
good seven or eight miles of tangent track between there and Johnsonburg.
Now I'll just point out, because we're gonna be on the other side of this...
this area here...
Roseville Road is paralleling us.
And over on the other side of this hill, and I think it's probably behind this when we go into this cut here,
will be where Hudson Farm is.
And we're gonna come back out and
look at Hudson Farm and
talk about the issues that have been
delaying the Cut-Off project.
Now you see that the drainage
channel or ditch on the left-hand side is the one that's handling the water.
Once again, it's okay here.
So,
even though you can see that there are
trees and branches and ties and leaves and whatnot that are in that particular channel,
clear that out, and it should run pretty well, one would think.
And all that will probably--and I
could be wrong, but we'll see--
that will be running towards Andover Junction Brook,
which is really the
stream that has been the cause of the delays in
construction on the Cut-Off for New Jersey Transit.
Very nice cut.
It's kind of rare
to see where the cut is more or less even on each side; usually one side is higher than the other.
But here you get sort of a balanced type of effect.
So for the Cut-Off this is somewhat unusual.
Now to go over again what a two degree curve is...
For railroads,
and I presume for roadways as well--they use the same terminology,
at least if you're using the English system--
two degrees would mean that for every 100 feet that you're going
forward
the curve is moving a total of two feet either to the left or to the right.
In this case it would be to the left.
A three degree curve would be three feet, and so forth.
And depending on the
sharpness of the curve
that determines the maximum speed limit.
There are things you can adjust for, like super-elevation of the curves; in other words, you can bank
the tracks.
But there's a limit to how much you get bank the tracks.
So a one degree curve, which would not be as sharp as this--
I believe the curve on top of Vail Fill in Blairstown is a one degree--that would allow for
80 miles an hour or more.
And the curve on the far side of the Delaware River Viaduct is three degrees, thirty seconds. In other words, three and a half degrees.
That's had either a 50 or 55 mile an hour speed limit over the years, depending on the amount of banking or super-elevation that's been applied at that location.
Now at this point, because we're
getting close to the station,
this curve, they may put banking on it, but
it's unlikely that at least at this point until the tracks are extended beyond here,
that any train is going to be going 70 miles an hour.
And here we go. We're almost at the station site. And we're about to cross over
Andover Junction Brook.
And true to form, these drainage ditches actually go into
Andover Junction Brook, which right now we're on top of it.
There's a shot of the Phoebe Snow,
which will show you,
and
the
abutment here is not visible because of the snow.
Just the edge of it. I'm not sure if that's what would be visible in the photograph.
We will show you the Phoebe Snow coming
westbound, which is, in other words, towards us right now, out of the rock cropping, the cut, and
--it's a 1950s shot--
crossing over Andover Junction Brook.
Now why is Andover Junction Brook significant?
Well, this is beginning of the station site at Andover.
And I'm gonna explain why it's significant.
But I'm also first going to go over the chronology of
how we got from
2001, which is the time where the State of New Jersey, the Department of
Transportation in Jersey, NJDOT,
becomes
the owner of the Cut-Off
through the use of eminent domain or condemnation against the two owners:
Jerry Turco, who owned everything
from the 602 grade crossing that we went through just a while back in the car;
and then Mr. Goldmeier, Burton Goldmeier,
who owned east of there up to Port Morris.
Now we're going to actually stop here because this is the middle of the station site.
You can see the road,
Roseville Road.
It doesn't veer off yet, but it goes around a curve there, but it actually parallels the site. This is the site.
All the way,
not quite as far as the Pequest Fill, but the Pequest Fill is not very far away from here at all.
But this would be the station site: parking, a station, a
platform.
Now,
what's the significance of the brook? Okay, we'll get to that.
2001, what happens is that, as I mentioned, this right-of-way
from Port Morris all the way to the
Delaware Water Gap
is now state-owned property.
After that funding is obtained, and this is through our
friend in Pennsylvania,
Senator Specter, and that's in about the 2003 timeframe where they get money for
engineering and
the environmental impact statement, or assessment, that has to be done.
That's one of those hoops. There had already been the one study that was done that back in '89, which was
by that time--2001, 2003--would have been obsolete.
And in order to get federal funding you really have to have what they call a FONSI, a finding of no significant impact.
Skipping ahead, that will be obtained in the 2008 or so
timeframe,
and that opens the door for funding--
a combination of federal and state funding that will be obtained--and
to kinda make a long story short, by 2010 that's in place.
The final hurdle is leaped, if you will, or lept, and
the money for
building or rebuilding the Cut-Off up to
here, 7.3 miles, what they call the minimum operating segment, MOS,
Phase One, if you will, has been obtained.
Now at that point
New Jersey Transit is involved, but also the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and
in parallel what happens is that
New Jersey Transit, and this goes back to the late 80s. I was here with my friend, Fred Wertz, who showed me this
spot
back in '87-'88, I'd say, I was here
where there was
hope to try to build a transit village across the way.
That's not going to work out, unfortunately, and we'll talk about that a little bit, but
there would have been a transit village in conjunction with this particular site.
But in the meantime, New Jersey Transit identifies this site,
but the
Department of Environmental Protection,
because of the stream over here,
says, well, we want you to look at a different
site. And
we will bring you down there, which is a segment which we recorded separately on another day.
But we'll bring you down there, and then bring you back and show you that site.
That's actually west of here, a couple thousand feet, I guess it would be roughly.
But we're talking 2010 now. While that's happening,
actually the clearing of the section we saw at the very beginning up by Port Morris where in
2011 will lay track and put about a mile or so of track there,
in parallel, this is
bubbling as an issue.
But because of them having separate environmental
or wetlands permits that
part of the project where we saw the three different disconnected pieces of track
continued; that work was allowed to continue while things were
basically
floundering on this end. So,
2011 the track goes down there. In December 2011, Norfolk Southern
brings in a rail train with all the track that's going to be needed for the rest of
the line all the way up to here.
We saw that when we went past it. It's all neatly stacked in Port Morris. What hasn't already been laid west of there,
about four miles or so of track has been laid; there's still another three miles to go.
So while all that's taking place that by,
I'll say, the spring time of 2012, the track that we see now is there; that's now six years ago.
So what happens after that that delays the project is the question?
Well, as I was saying, the DEP, the Department of Environmental Protection, is
telling New Jersey Transit: You have to go look at another site. Well, that's what they did.
They basically waste at least a year in that. They told DEP: this is not going to work;
we don't think this is a good idea.
So on and so forth, not to mention the cost, and when we go down there,
you'll get a little more detail, but what happens in the meantime is--and we turn around look at this brook here--
the New Jersey regulations change.
What happens is...
and you'll see where the ATV is; he's almost coming up to where the brook is.
The headlights.
The laws in New Jersey change.
Originally,
if you were within only a hundred feet of a stream,
if you're within a hundred feet of a stream there were certain regulations which kicked in and
certain mitigation had to take place.
Well, a hundred feet is not very far. In fact, this station
was outside of that buffer zone of a hundred feet. A hundred feet would be,
well, quite a distance from here.
When New Jersey Transit comes back after it's been fiddling around or having to fiddle around with a different station site
what happens is that with the regulations changing now that buffer zone has become 500 feet, which puts it well into
the area that would have been previously identified for the station. Oh,
horrors! Now what has to happen is New Jersey Transit has to restart the whole
wetlands application process. Now, DEP could have granted them a waiver or grandfathered them in; they could have. But as
we will see, and then we'll get into the Hudson Farm issue,
DEP--
I want to really give them the benefit of the doubt, but I
don't really think they earned it,
what has been seen over the years. And this is but the first example.
Now, this will get
actually taken care of eventually.
In other words, New Jersey Transit will have to do what it has to do to fulfill the obligations and
manage to get itself the wetland permit, because this is considered wetlands; you're in a buffer zone of a
trout stream.
It's not really a trout stream; it actually runs into a trout steam, which is the Pequest River, which is
way the heck down in the valley here; it's called the Pequest
Fill, the Pequest
River is on the far end of the Pequest Fill, so that's at least three or so miles in a linear direction.
But this brook actually runs into it
somewhere downstream, but
what happens next,
after all is said and done, you think, okay.
Everything has been fixed, and we're going to be ready to go and start doing
construction.
Then the Hudson Farm issue comes up, and that's going to be the thing we'll talk about
after we go just to take a look down at
what I'll call the alternative site for Andover station; it's never going to be used.
But it was the one that New Jersey Transit looked at. And
then what we'll do is come back here and
we're gonna take a walk up to Hudson Farm. It's not very far from here.
And along the way discuss why we're still at an impasse. In other words, right now
where there's no
construction taking place and there hasn't been construction, as I mentioned, for six years,
partly because of this, but the rest of the time you know, oh my gosh,
that's been at least four or more years, now roughly, I'm guessing,
that the Hudson farm issue has been
the hold up, and we'll discuss what that means. What does Hudson Farm have to do with any of this? And,
we'll see.
Here we are at the
alternative
Andover station stop.
This stop was proposed at two different times
over the years.
Once for New Jersey Transit, it was actually proposed by the
DEP.
Let's say to be more exact the DEP actually directed
New Jersey Transit to find a different location than the Andover station stop
which was determined in the environmental impact statement for the federal government.
So,
this spot was actually looked at by New Jersey Transit.
This would be back in the
2010-2011 timeframe, somewhere in there; it was rejected. They knew that this was not going to be feasible.
But as you can see, we're actually
here at the Pequest Fill.
We're, I'm guessing, a few thousand feet west of the actual station stop which is off to the right, which is eastbound from here.
Westbound would be towards the Water Gap and so forth.
The second time it was proposed, and this was more of an informal proposal, was by--at least the way I learned about it--was
from John Ursin,
who is the attorney who represents
Hudson Farm,
IAT
Corporation,
which is involved, which has the property on which the
culvert on Roseville Road, which we will explain about in a little bit here.
Mr. Ursin brought me over here to this location and
we talked about this and one of the things we talked about is was it possible to change the location. And
I indicated that I didn't think that was possible. I actually did some further investigation, which
I've been told at different times for other reasons
where there to have been changes to what was in the environmental impact statement,
where those changes were proposed, and
the same answer has come out: no, you don't want to do that. The
Environmental Impact Statement, and it's not a statement per se, it's actually a document
which
I have printed out at home.
The main document itself
runs about 500 pages.
But with all the appendices you would add maybe another thousand or 1500 pages, so it's an enormous document.
But the thing is that it, basically, I'll say,
is a locked document in which case that if you make, or try to make, a significant change to it
then you open the door to all sorts of other changes and delays, and so forth. So as you can imagine, there's a resistance to
not making anything that is not really, really needed, and the change in location of the station,
which is if you build a station here
it would probably would have to resemble something like the Mount Arlington Station which is up on a fill similarly,
which is from this location almost ten plus miles east of here.
But,
to make that kind of a change, and it would been more money to build a station here obviously because
Andover is on a flat area, whereas, this is who is up in the air. I mean, this is the Pequest Fill.
So, as a result, long story short
while this station site was proposed
It has been rejected for a couple different reasons.
Now,
the one advantage that you could argue that this station site would have had would have been that it's on a side of the
Cut-Off, on the south side,
perhaps slightly closer to the middle of town, ever so slightly.
We'll take you on a ride from here, which will bring you up to the other station site,
and show you the relationship of the two.
But,
overall, it's a moot point because
since this particular site was not studied in the Environmental Impact Statement, it's not going to be considered. So
there are pluses and minuses to both, but it's really an academic issue at this point. It's not something up for discussion
But it's included here just to let you know that this was actually looked at. And
was a cause of some of the delay for the Cut-Off project, the Andover
section,
because New Jersey Transit had to go back and
reevaluate
that site,
the original site, and look at other sites. As I said, this was one site, but this is really I think the one that
if it was going to be moved made the most sense. But
to go back to the other site,
we'll actually take a look over there as well and compare but
just because of the situation
any other site other than the original site doesn't make any sense
just because the
delay that would be needed in order to do the reevaluation
just doesn't make any sense. So,
that's
what I'll call the alternative Andover station site.
We're going take a trip over to the actual Andover station site and
we'll poke around there again.
Okay, we're back here at Andover, Andover station site and Andover Junction Brook.
Now the Cut-Off is just over here. It's inside of that cut there and then the station site
Is to the right of the bridge or the
culvert that goes underneath the Cut-Off, and then the station site itself is inside that
set of woods, but it's a flat area. This is one of the few places on the Cut-Off where there's a flat area
adjacent to the right-of-way, and it's the reason why it was picked as a station site.
So what we're going to do is we're going to follow this stream
upstream. You
can see where the
brook goes
underneath Roseville Road.
And in the distance you see Hudson Farm, which is where we're going to walk to.
Now the question is, well, what does this have to do with the Cut-Off?
Well what happens is
the Department of Environmental Protection, after all of the
permits have been cleared
for the Cut-Off project to Andover,
someone is told, or somehow
does, a computer analysis on this brook.
And what they look at is the theoretical hundred-year flood,
and what would happen during the theoretical hundred-year flood.
And what this program determined was that
the
pipe up here, which we will see in a moment,
it was believed that it might potentially fail
during a hundred-year flood.
Now, a hundred-year flood is actually more than a hundred-year flood because the actual
definition includes, I think, either 10 or 20 percent overage, so it's actually greater than the hundred-year flood.
We don't know that there's ever have been a hundred-year flood; there's never been a problem here.
You can see the pipe.
And it's running pretty good; there's snow melt, so it's actually
running,
probably a lot faster than would be during the summertime.
But that pipe continues underneath and actually
begins at a culvert that's on the other side, just beside that mailbox, on the other side of the
the barn--the red barn. So, we're going to walk up there.
Say hello to the dog.
Now the pipe is actually underneath here as we go. It's only several hundred feet that it actually goes underneath the ground.
Now the contention of DEP was that during the hundred-year flood this pipe would fail--potentially fail--
and would send water going down to the
station site and would cause damage.
And, as a result,
DEP imposed a requirement that New Jersey Transit replace this culvert.
You really can't see it too well with all the snow here, but there are like arms
made of concrete which actually
channel the water into the pipe and the pipe goes underneath
this road and all the way down to where we just saw the pipe come out.
And so with this requirement,
the
Hudson Farm people
were put in the position of having to agree that this work would be done.
So,
what would have to happen is that the pipe would have to be dug up and replaced.
What that would mean for the barn
we're not sure whether it can be preserved or has to be torn down. Not sure how that's going to play out. But,
whatever the case may be,
until this agreement between New Jersey Transit and
Hudson Farm, until that agreement on
how to replace the pipe
would take place,
basically,
this section--everything other than Roseville Tunnel, which is a separate project for all intents and purposes--
everything else is stalled because nothing can proceed until this
agreement between
Hudson Farm and New Jersey Transit can be consummated.
A couple years ago--because this is Andover
Township--the Andover Township
Committee became involved and
offered to actually
expedite
eminent domain; in other words, to condemn--I
presume only for an easement, a temporary easement, in other words, where they would just have access for a limited period of time
to do the replacement of the pipe and that would be it and then the easement would be
extinguished, and then after that
the pipe would be there and everything would proceed. Now, the only thing is that
there was also an alternate
proposal
which would put a pipe that would actually go from here, approximately over where the
culvert is--and this is the dreaded culvert right over here--and
would channel a pipe,
presumably, and would go underneath the road, on the left side of the road, Roseville Road,
and then come out roughly where other pipe is and so you would have basically two pipes. Not sure
if this would be the only pipe or there may be two pipes.
I'm not sure, but that would give the extra capacity if in the event of this
dreaded hundred-year flood, which
this particular culvert has survived Hurricane Floyd, Hurricane Irene,
which apparently...I know Floyd, for example, we got
upwards of twenty inches of rain in some places in this area; if it didn't fail during that particular flood,
I don't know when it would possibly ever fail. But, be that as it may,
this is the situation; it has to be done.
And,
everybody involved is working on it, and until that takes place we're kind of stuck where we are. So,
that's where we are here in 2018.
Even the dog is probably upset about the whole situation.
But, this is the end of Part 16.
I hope you look forward to Part 17, which we're going to go actually into the future.
We're now here in 2018, but we're going to go into the future in the next part and
I hope you will look forward to that, and that you've enjoyed this episode on the Lackawanna Cut-Off.
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