Canaan, Conn. – Apparently, there’s nothing like the prospect of commuter rail service between the Berkshire region and the New York Metropolitan Area to warm the spirits. Enduring wind chills well below zero, about 100 passenger train advocates from the Berkshires and Connecticut rallied outside the Canaan Railroad Station Saturday (January 31) in support of the restoration of commuter service to New York City and urging Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy to “train up” – as one placard declared.
Despite the bone-chilling temperatures, even under a bright sun at noon, speakers enthusiastically endorsed the restoration of passenger service.
“There are three legs to the campaign to restore passenger service,” explained Great Barrington resident and Train Campaign founder Karen Christensen. “Freight service, tourism and smart job growth. Tourist traffic is only one leg of the stool. Supporting existing – and new – businesses with improved freight lines is the second. The third is sustainable economic development that will occur because our regions will be far more attractive to young entrepreneurs and investors when we are connected again by passenger rail to New York, and to the world.”
The envisioned commuter service would run on the Housatonic Railroad line from Pittsfield, Mass., south through Berkshire County to Danbury, Conn., a distance of 90 miles. The route would then head west to connect to MetroNorth’s Harlem Valley line at Southeast, New York, a distance of 12 miles. The rebuilding of the 112-mile rail corridor to make it suitable for passenger service is estimated to cost $200 million.
On January 5, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation completed the purchase of the tracks and roadbed of the Housatonic Railroad, for $12.13 million. The Housatonic Railroad was given a perpetual freight easement on the line. This spring, the state will begin a $35 million upgrade of the line from Lenox to the Connecticut border, according to the Housatonic’s Vice President for Special Projects, Colin Pease. The upgrade is the initial phase of the state’s commitment of $100 million to rebuild the 40 miles of track in Berkshire County to passenger rail service standards and construct stations for the eight to 16 trains that would traverse the Berkshire line daily.
But the state of Connecticut has yet to agree to support its portion of the rail project.
State Assembly Rep. Roberta B. Willis (D-64th District) of Lakeville, encouraged the rail advocates gathered at the Canaan station to keep pressure on Gov. Malloy who has proclaimed his intention to focus on improving transportation infrastructure.
Willis has filed a bill (H.B. No. 6343) for the “restoration of the Housatonic Railroad Line.” The measure would “protect the continuing operation of freight service to the northwest region’s five major industries, to protect environmentally sensitive areas that this railroad runs through by improving the infrastructure to prevent derailments and to operate a passenger rail service from New York City up through our region to support the regional economy.”
During the rally, Christensen gave Willis petition for Gov. Malloy with 4,411 signatures from Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York, “and a smattering from places far afield.”
“The Train Campaign has had donations from Alaska and California, and we’re coordinating a European train advocates group, too,” Christensen said.
Todd Shearer, of Restore Rail Service – NW Connecticut who hosted the Canaan station event, noted that commuter rail would provide an incentive for young entrepreneurs to establish businesses in Northwest Connecticut and the Berkshires, since the younger generation has demonstrated a preference for rail travel.
Shearer introduced 19-year-old Canaan native and University of Connecticut student Christian Allyn, who delivered an impassioned plea for the restoration of train service as a means of reviving the region’s economic vitality (see below for the text of Allyn’s statement).
“I am here to talk about the future of North Canaan and Northwestern Connecticut from the youth’s perspective,” he said. “We will write letters, make the calls, raise the money, create the laws, sow the seeds, plant the trees, build each other up, and reap our skills and talents, to get our trains back, get our station back, and make North Canaan and Northwestern Connecticut better than it has ever been.”
Before the rally, Pease predicted that the investment Massachusetts is making in repairing the rail line could very well persuade Connecticut to do the same.
“Phase I will upgrade the freight line to passenger standards, putting in 136-pound rail,” he said, “but what it really does is zero in on Connecticut. Gov. Malloy has said he wants a significant investment in transportation, and now there are four bills before the Legislature that would upgrade the line between Danbury and the Massachusetts line, and the Northwest Hills council of Governments is preparing a transportation plan for the region. But Connecticut has a funding issue since the gas tax is an excise tax on the price of a gallon of gas. As the price per gallon lowers, cars become more fuel efficient, and people take more mass transit, there is less revenue for transportation projects.”
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Text of Christian Allyn’s remarks to the “Restore our Trains” rally:
“Hello folks, for those of you who don’t know, my name is Christian Allyn and apart from being a lifelong resident of North Canaan and the Northwest Corner and I am here to talk about the future of North Canaan and Northwestern Connecticut from the youth’s perspective. What I can do, but am not, is tell you about how my generation is driving less, using more mass transit, leaving areas like Northwestern Connecticut, and go home, but I’m here to talk about real future of Northwestern Connecticut and especially North Canaan, the future that we make now. You all in the crowd know how special, and really magical North Canaan and Northwestern Connecticut is in the world. There is really no place like it. Where else is there a fully restored Iron Furnace? Where else is there a public high school as beautiful as Housatonic Valley Regional High School? And where else is the largest Victorian Train Station in the United States of America? It’s here and nowhere else. But all these material things, though they are important and though we cherish them, there is something here far more important than all those things could ever be: it’s the culture and soul of Northwestern Connecticut and that’s really what this rally is about today.
“You know, folks, I tell stories about Northwestern Connecticut to my friends at UConn all the time and they love it. I tell them about Bunny McGuire and Dot Cecchinato, the faculty, staff and FFA program down at the high school. I tell them about Ed Kirby, Dick Paddock and the semi-retired world changers who take their weekends to give tours at the Beckley Furnace, how the oldest Allyn alive has the nickname of Junior, and tell them about how the good people here are unlike anyone else in the world.
“My friends were looking forward to coming here this weekend to see our little corner of the world but unfortunately a leadership conference scheduled for last Saturday got pushed to today and they all couldn’t make it. One of them said to me, “It must be hard to choose between the rally and the conference.” Well, folks, you know what I said? “Do you know what’s hard? When you’re 6 years old, a month after an attempt to topple the economic and social structure of your country, you’re standing in the ashes of the economic and social structure of your hometown? Do you know what’s hard, seeing the project to rebuild that structure in front of which we stand today linger on for more than half of my life because ‘there just isn’t any money’? And do you know what’s the hardest thing of all? Seeing the people of your hometown lose hope and believe that the best days of Northwestern Connecticut –and especially North Canaan — are behind us.” After that my friends pushed to get that conference cancelled, not for themselves but so I may be free to come here today, and they succeeded.
“I have a little story that goes along with that. Ten years ago, I was sitting with my siblings, parents and grandparents at their home in East Canaan directly opposite Elm Knoll’s milk sign for a good ol’ meat, mashed potato and gravy dinner. Somehow, through conversation and amongst us eating, my Grandpa Paul, former first selectman of North Canaan said, ‘I don’t think Canaan will ever be great again.’
“The eating stopped and there was silence until I asked ‘Well, what do you mean, Grandpa?” He looked at me straight in my eyes and said, ‘Son, we’ve lost our train, we’ve lost our station, and we’re losing the people who built this town.” I asked, “Well who’s that?” My grandma interjected, “Paul, the grandkids shouldn’t here this!” He stopped her, “No, Lee, they have to hear this,” and that’s when he listed off so many names that we would all freeze to death if I said them all. Just to paraphrase they were the people who got up every morning to tend the fields, the quarries, and the stores of this town, the people who would keep their restaurants open 24/7 because everyone needs a place, and the people who would get up every morning, ride their bike down to the doughboy war memorial and put up the American Flag every day. Grandpa Allyn also said that all those people, if not already gone, would have all have 10 years left at most, then the town would die. He said no one will ever believe in North Canaan again.
“Here we are ten years later and what’s left? He was mostly right. The train is still gone, the station is still gone, most of the people he mentioned and were his age are gone, but after all these years do you know what I would say to him today? I’d say ‘I tell ya what, Grandpa, I believe in Canaan! Jayne, Brandon, and especially Todd believe in Canaan! Roberta believes in Canaan! And above all else we all here today believe in Canaan! And we won’t let our town die in our hands because we care about each other, not just ourselves, we care about the legacies of our ancestors, we care about all who will come after us and,
We will write the letters,
Make the calls,
Raise the money,
Create the laws,
Sow the seeds,
Plant the trees,
Build up each other
And,
Reap our skills and talents,
To get our train back, get our station back, and make North Canaan and Northwestern Connecticut better than it has even been, which is the way it was always meant to be!
