QUEENSBURY, N.Y. — Officials in New York’s Warren County are considering proposals by three operators to restore rail service between Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and North Creek.
NewYorkUpstate.com reports that Denver-based short line holding company OmniTRAX, Las Vegas-based United Rail, and Florida-based Railnet International have submitted proposals to operate the route. Iowa Pacific Holdings operated the line for seven years before halting service last year; it retains ownership of part of the route; Warren County and the town of Corinth, N.Y., own the remainder.
The county solicited requests for proposals to resume passenger and freight service on the line. OmniTRAX is primarily interested in traffic removing mine tailings from a former lead mine on the route, spokesman Ron Margulis told the news site. “Passenger and other freight would be secondary.” The United Rail proposal would market excursions from rail stations along the route, and is part of a partnership also seeking to find new tenants for a former paper plant that would generate freight traffic.
The news site could not reach Railnet International for comment. On its website, the company describes itself as a corporation “that specializes in the designing, building, operation, and maintenance of railroad systems.” The four projects described on the site are all in Africa.
@Mike Weyhrich: The Hoosier State was doomed before it even started. When Amtrak inspectors “failed” the IP equipment 3 times before the first train ran, was a sign that Amtrak was not going to go easy on them.
Remember that Ed Ellis had been having Pullmans running behind Amtrak to New Orleans prior to that, so his crew knew Amtrak rolling standards.
It’s a warning to any other private enterprise that wants to run passenger services in Amtrak’s space.
Don’t count on Virgin Trains USA attempting to secure services on Amtrak served routes. As for now, it will be their own ROW, their own trainsets.
This is a great example of why this country is stupid. They tore up miles and miles of track to close the Mechanicville freight yard, then in the same county, the railroad industry gets into a battle about storing rail cars on running track. Lets learn to take care of what we already have. Even though it cant be seen at the present there will be a need. Everything runs in cycles.
All of these difficult circumstances with Iowa Pacific are due to the reprehensible way Amtrak bled out IP with the Hoosier State train contract they pulled over on IP and the State of Indiana. Shame on Amtrak for doing that, for the State of Indiana for not being willing to accomodate IP to modify the contract to help IP. That financial bleed out was to “teach” IP a lesson to not show up Amtrak for their horrible service on that train.
Iowa Pacific and SNCR owe $1.3 million to the IRS and they placed a lien on Iowa Pacific assets in NY. SNCR also owe about $200k in back taxes to the county governments.
Ed Ellis says he has put the Sanford Lake section he owns up for sale for $5 million, but with a growing line of creditors and lien holders lining up (and the lawyers right there with them) he may not see much after the titanium dust settles.
Warren County feels like they are in a weird spot.
They can’t abandon the line (for a trail) if in fact Ed Ellis sells his line because it is the only way out. The STB would not approve the abandonment of the connection if there is a viable operator and an online customer on the Sanford Lake section.
Warren County sold all of their railroad maintenance of way equipment when Iowa Pacific signed the contract in 2011. So if they take over maintenance, they will have to shell out the dough to do so.
While I know Ed Ellis gets a bad name in many places, he really did bend over backwards for these government entities who love the services he brings to their communities, but don’t want to deal with the economic realities of maintaining that service.
By law, those towns had no jurisdiction to say what he could or couldn’t run or store on those tracks. But he tried and tried to work with them, if you won’t let me store cars he said, then you need to compensate me for my lost income. Of course they said no way. He spent an incredible 2 hours answering questions to all comers.
The Greens looked up the labels on the tankers in storage (Union Tank Car) and started harassing them to get their cars out of there. (they did) Ellis in return threatened arrest for trespassing on railroad property. They guy even offered to build a bike trail along the ROW. He even did a deal to have rail bike tourism on the ROW.
It is no coincidence that Iowa Pacific’s tax issues with SNCR started at about the same time he tried to bring in storage during the off season and got a wall of protests.
This is very similar to the issues he had on the Santa Cruz line in California. Not enough online revenue, so backstop it by facilitating storage. The locals howled over empty tank cars being stored.
Everyone wants something, as long as someone else is paying for it. They all want the services, but no one wants to pay. It’s no wonder Ed Ellis wants to get out of the Adirondacks.
Too bad reporters can’t get much of their stories straight. No lead mine is involved. No tailings are involved. The company wants to crush waste rock for use as aggregate. The original mines were for iron ore that contains titanium and vanadium.
Wasn’t it OmniTRAX the company that defaulted on the line to Churchill Manitoba when it had flooding issues?
@Steven Berg: As I have posted earlier. OmniTRAX needed $4M to restore “full” service to the Churchill line. They were going to front the $450k to get the line to minimal service themselves. (10mph)
When they discussed this with the Canadian Government, they were given a bit of the cold shoulder.
With no other sources of significant revenue on the line, they had no choice but to walk away.
It turns out later, the provincial government, the national government and an all-Canadian consortium began negotiations behinds the scenes to take over not just the railroad, but the Port of Churchill and all the logistics management as well.
If OmniTRAX had been offered such a sweet piece of the action, they would have had a revenue source to fund the major repair. Turns out the Canadian Government is paying the consortium the money to fix the line completely. Something they refused OmniTRAX.
So did OmniTRAX “walk away”, yes. Did the government want them to walk away, turns out, seems that was “yes” as well.
Correct, Steve. OmniTRAX bailed out there, and I believe on another line on the West coast that needed expensive work.
Also, Rail International has a subsidary, Rail USA, which took over the Granada RR when Iowa Pacific backed out. They are the ones buying the Tallahassee & P&A subs on the Florida panhandle from CSX.