Outrageous! Small town overwhelmed with idle rail cars parked in their backyards

[Liberal_in_LA]

I heard about this on the radio, had to see it to believe it. Rail company leasing it's rails to park idle rail cars...far as the eye can see, right behind homes, cutting town in two.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2009/03/23/ntm.new.castle.trains.cnn

[grasswire]

1. housing

It just makes sense.

[Liberal_in_LA]

5. cold in the winter, hot in the summer. A metal prison

[Hannah Bell]

15. 1 in 9 real housing units are vacant. why pay to convert boxcars into houses

when you can just pay to move people into the 15 million empty ones?

[Toucano]

2. I hope that is the worst thing the people of Newcastle IN have happen to them.

My grand kids can't play in the back yard without getting muddy?

There are people living in tents.

[catnhatnh]

3. Arguing with myself...

Argument 1. The railroad has been there over 100 years and the houses came later.
Argument 2. Yep, but there's a difference between a train transiting and train parts site sitting.

And both are valid.

[Norquist Nemesis]

6. It seems (if they were serious about it) that the town could pass an ordinance

that parked cars would be required to sit outside the town. The language would have to be cleaned up, but yeah, if it's having the effects like the video shows then the town could do something about...if they really wanted to.

[catnhatnh]

7. Y'all have to know two things....

In order to park them it has to be a spur or bypass...meaning there is either another track through town or no economic activity for a thru train. The cars are obviously built to handle Detroit traffic. The town needs to either charge for the cars sitting there or make enough of a nuisance to the railroad to get them moved.

[Liberal_in_LA]

8. The town's been trying everything to get the cars out.

[Norquist Nemesis]

9. Exactly! Which is what I was getting at

If the town leaders really want to do something about it, they would figure out whether they need to charge for the cars or make a nuisance to get them moved. It seems at this stage they don't. If there's a will there's a way.

[Liberal_in_LA]

10. NPR had a segment on this. They tried charging $2000 a day for weed abatement. Rail co brought out

the weed wackers. Seriously, the town's been working on it.

[Norquist Nemesis]

11. Then charge them $10,000 per day per car not moved outside the city limits

within a 24 hour period or something. Charge a tax on the cars that haven't been moved within a 12 hour period, and confiscate the same and sell them for taxes...with regulations that the cars must be transported out of the city limits. Something.

$2000 per day for weed abatement when you can pay a couple of people $7.00 and hour to walk with a weed eater isn't really wanting to do something about the problem.

[anigbrowl]

13. On what basis

Is there some law against parking rail cars there? If not, then there's no basis for charging. I sympathize with the people in the town, but you can't just go around issuing arbitrary fines and taxes with no law to back them up. The right thing to do would be to pass an ordinance about it and give the railroad company a reasonable amount of time to comply with it.

[MattBaggins]

23. Tell them they have one year to move them or the city is going to

seize them and sell them to the highest bidder.

[Norquist Nemesis]

4. They elected their first Con Mayor in 2007

the first one since the 1950's. Wonder if he's getting kickbacks.

[ThoughtCriminal]

12. Signs of the economy

When there's less being shipped that excess capacity has to be stored. For some shortline railroads, the storage fees are the only thing that can keep them in business until shipping picks up again. Usually, this is done in more remote areas on out-of-service lines.

[Bunny]

14. What about emergency services? How would fire trucks, ambulances, and police

easily get from one side of those tracks to another? I would be very concerned about that.

[dsc]

16. they don't block the crossings

[Bunny]

18. In the video it looked like they were blocking at least one street crossing.

But it was early this morning when I watched it, maybe I was still half-asleep.

[dsc]

19. I don't think it was a crossing since it had no gates

[Bunny]

20. OK.

[MichellesBFF]

17. According to my husband

He works for a city here, any town with a railway line running through it has to have a fire house on either side of tracks, just in case a train is blocking the roads.

[hootinholler]

21. I think they need painted!

Woodland scenes. Maybe some sunsets, mountains, flowers.

-Hoot

[arcadian]

22. Right-wing New World Order types peeing in their pants over this.

Grooves into their FEMA camps fixation.