Hi Jeff, I did encounter that tree area, but got around it, and came upon some kind of a junkyard type area, the owner was there and he actually moved his truck to let me go by!! yes then you go on a paved trail and hook back onto the tracks.

i saw that dangerous sink hole with a ladder sticking out of it. Pretty nasty.

Its smooth sailing all the way through to PA. Cant wait to go back, maybe this weekend if its nice.

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www.abandonedmines.net

If you ride out on the weekend, the bar at the end is closed on Sunday (Slateford Inn.) Also if you need gas follow the live tracks south once you are in PA into the center of PortLand PA and there is a Citgo station, You can also grab a bite to eat in the towns center. The Citgo station usually lets you leave your quad behind there shop. Another fun thing to do in the summer is follow the live line just south of town past the power plant to the old rail brige and you can bridge jump into the river. Becareful there is only 1 area you can jump from and I have not done it since the past 2 floods.

So are they replacing the bridge so that the railroad will be passable in the future? I wouldn't expect them to be allowed to make it impossible for the railroad to resume service...

What is this sinkhole from? It is in the railbed?

Miner Greg

Construction on reactivating the railroad is just years away. Here is a link about the entire project. http://www.njtransit.com/pdf/Lackawanna ... t%20EA.pdf . The single lane bridge that is currently there (Sparta-Stanhope Rd) was built in 1904 or 1909 and it is in pretty rough shape. This bridge is not going to be knocked down it is going to be part of the rails to trails hiking path network (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rails_to_trails_NJ), they are going to build a new bridge next to it for the car traffic. The sinkhole looks like an old drainage system that has collapsed.

I dont know about restoring traffic so soon, i hear it will take about 12 years of clearing and rebuilding. (even though it took 2 years to create back in the 1900's using no heavy equipment!)

The engineering and environmental study will cost 100 million dollars allone. and the refurbishing over 500 million!!

I think they said it would be completed by 2030. Wake me when its morning.

All that just to ride 3500 people from PA to NYC? 3500 only! It would take a century to recouperate the expenses.

I say just leave it as an off road trail, and charge 10 bucks all you can ride.

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www.abandonedmines.net

The latest dates I heard for this project included completion by 2012. However originally they said either 2006 or 2008, which we know didn't and isn't going to happen. The study published by NJ Transit has a "No-Build" option of the Cut-Off to be completed by 2030. This means that whatever they do if they don't build the Cut-Off must be complete by 2030. i couldn't find anything that specified when the Cut-Off would be complete if they did build it.

Greg