Originally Posted by
fins2right
. . .
It would be neat to see some of these old railways be converted over to trails like the old Newport to Hartland section. I was in Bowdoinham today caching and the section of rail from Brunswick to Augusta would be perfect. With no factories or mills, it's a complete pipe dream to think that trains will someday run on these tracks. In fact, the plan to rebuild the tracks from Westbrook to Fryeburg is, quite frankly, insane. (that's the old Mountain Division rail of the Maine Central Railroad) The cost just to replace the road crossings would be in the millions to bring them up to modern standards. Fortunately,the economy is in great shape and we have the money for these things.....
My not so secret hope is that some day the powers that be will buy up the Belfast and Moosehead Lake Railroad line and turn it into a multi use rail trail . . . it would certainly get more use than it is getting today.
Unfortunately, whenever you suggest such a thing invariably there will be the folks who come out of the wood work to decry such an idea as short sighted as they seem to think rail transportation is the wave of the future . . . which may be so in some metropolitan areas or places where a lot of freight needs to be moved cheaply . . . but Waldo County, Maine is one of those places where this will not happen. Using some of these old railroad lines as multi use trails would have many more benefits to many more people vs. just having a railroad preservation society run the railroad as a hobby in the summer.
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but the realization that there is something more important than fear."
"Death is only one of many ways to die."