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Sat, 08 Nov 2014

Rail Trails #13

I have a goal of riding every named Rail-Trail in New York State. There are many more railbeds not used for trains anymore which are also ridable. They are usually unnamed, unsigned, and unpublished. I speculate that this is because the owner is either indifferent or away. I've ridden some of these but I'm more interested in getting the named trails ridden first. I'm uploading them to OpenStreetMap as I go.

Rode three more trails: Charlie Major, Harlem Valley Hillsdale, and Harlem Valley Copake Falls northern extension. It's snowing right now, so I think the rest of these are going to have to wait for next year.

The first trail ride for which I have a date is June of 2004. So this has been a ten-year project for me. Given that I'm not done yet, and they're continually making new trails, it looks like I've got another set of trails to ride.

Trails I've ridden:

Trails I haven't (yet) ridden:

posted at: 21:30 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry

Ride starting Sat Oct 18 13:00:55 2014

2.45 km 8046.76 feet 1.52 mi 1240.00 seconds 20.67 minutes 0.34 hours 4.42 mi/hr

The Charlie Major Nature Trail is not a terribly long rail-trail, but it has plenty of history (ruins) to be appreciated, along with three railroad bridges, several dams, and a pretty creek.

posted at: 21:23 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry

Ride starting Thu Nov 6 08:55:04 2014

6.91 km 22677.91 feet 4.30 mi 2018.00 seconds 33.63 minutes 0.56 hours 7.66 mi/hr

Rode a brand-new section of the Harlem Valley Rail Trail. So new, in fact, that the construction workers had to pause to let me through. :-) They were very nice, and I was trying to be as polite as I could about interrupting them. But I got to ride it!

It's a portion of the railbed between Copake Falls to Fado Road, Hillsdale. It extends from Copake Falls to Orphan Farm Road, where there is a nice trailhead being developed.

posted at: 21:13 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry

Archives

5.82 km 19108.49 feet 3.62 mi 2054.00 seconds 34.23 minutes 0.57 hours 6.34 mi/hr

Rode an undeveloped section of the Harlem Valley Rail Trail. It's open to the public but not paved (yet). It's a portion of the railbed between Copake Falls to Fado Road, Hillsdale. I was able to ride from Ford Lane in Hillsdale south to just shy of NY-22. Unfortunately, the railroad bridge was removed, and Black Grocery Road's bridge was also removed, so there is currently no way across the Roeliff Jansen Kill.

Philip Glick says on Facebook's Abandoned Rails group: "...All I can tell you is the following... The southern abutment and bridge was removed under a NYSDOT project in the early 1990's The three things were low bridge clearance, narrow lanes passing under and poor sight distance around the Northbound NY-22 curve. The bridge that was removed was a Deck girder bridge that was silver in color and the dirt fill was cut back also.

posted at: 20:59 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry

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