Build the Rail Trail!

🎼 The steel rail still ain’t heard the news… 🎵 
This train got the disappearing blues.

    ~ Steve Goodman

There is an unused railroad line that runs the entire length of Shenandoah County plus additional miles in Warren County. The railroad company is interested in selling it to the State of Virginia for use as a trail. There is enthusiastic public support for this idea, but there is also some opposition, and there is a competing proposal for rail with trail, which is resurrecting the railroad and putting a trail beside it. The state of Virginia is studying both ideas.

I went to a meeting on Tuesday where an update of the VDOT study was presented. Several hundred people attended. The state does not know yet how much it would cost to build a rail with trail, but they have diagrams showing what it would look like. Probably the cost would be prohibitive because additional grading would be needed, and fencing would be erected between the tracks and the trail. Additional bridges would also have to be built unless bypasses for the trail could be built along roadways.

I’d like to see the recreational trail built without further delays. No railroad company has expressed an interest in using the old rails. There are other railroad tracks providing freight service to the valley, and passenger service is available in Staunton but not heavily used. Updating the old rails for passenger trains would be very expensive. 

Freight is still carried over the other railroad lines, but even more freight volume is hauled by truck to the “Inland Port” at Front Royal.  This is a specialized depot where the huge containers which replaced old style boxcars are transferred from trucks to trains, and vice versa. These same containers are transferred to ships at seaports.  It’s remarkably fast and efficient. I think it was the opening of the Inland Port in 1989 that sparked the demise of the railroad line now in question. A short section of that line remained in service until 2020, when the publishing plant in Strasburg closed. I think it was their last customer and Norfolk Southern had continued service to it in order to honor an old contract.

The old tracks are now overgrown and deteriorating. I miss hearing the sound of the trains. When we lived in Waterlick, we could hear train passing through late at night because it blew its whistle at the road crossing. Trains are beautiful, but they’re not coming back without an economic need.

I’ve been following online discussions about the competing proposals. There are some very vocal people who don’t want a trail at all. Basically they don’t want “strangers” around. You might be surprised at how many people who have lived in a rural area all their lives are suspicious of city people. I’ve heard it expressed as the “from heres” versus “come heres.”  They even say that newcomers should go back to where they came from because they bring changes.