VOORHEESVILLE — Mayor Richard Straut said Voorheesille had “heard a lot, and rightfully so” from residents about poor road conditions at the railroad crossing near the Voorheesville Public Library.

Meanwhile, Straut said he and village attorney Rich Reilly continue to advocate for the Quiet Zone, which has been stalled over project funding. The sides are “trying to iron out some of the details, I guess, as we move forward and [Albany County] moves forward,” he said.

The poor condition of the School Road crossing was the result of track work performed by Norfolk Southern in January, Straut said at the March 28 board of trustees meeting, “The restoration, of course, [Norfolk Southern] did in the middle of winter. So the restoration was not good. And it’s very rough.”

Norfolk Southern has been at the center of a major controversy in Ohio following the derailment of one of its trains carrying five different types of hazardous materials. 

In early February, 38 cars on a 150-car-long train derailed near the village of East Palestine. About 20 of the 38 derailed cars contained hazardous materials that, three days after the accident, had to be burned off in an attempt to avoid a more damaging explosion. 

Residents in and around East Palestine, a village of about 4,800 on the Pennsylvania-Ohio border, claim the sending of toxins into the atmosphere has led to some getting sick. 

Locally, Norfolk Southern is working to bring back into service the former Voorheesville Running Track, a 15.5-mile line that goes from Delanson in Schenectady County through Altamont and on to Voorheesville, where it will merge with CSX’s tracks. 

Norfolk Southern’s plan is to run twice per day a 1.7-mile-long double-stacked train that pulls 80,000-pound capacity rail cars. 

The speciality train will be used to move vehicles east from the nation’s auto manufacturers to within 35 miles of Boston without having to stop in Saratoga County to take the top stack off the train to make it through a too-low tunnel in Massachusetts.

In February 2022, Norfolk Southern was named as a recipient of $5 million in New York State funds to pay for the upgrades. 

At the March 28 village meeting, Straut said both he and Superintendent of Public Works Brett Hotaling had been in touch with Albany County over the issues at School Road, which in turn requested Norfolk Southern to “get out there and do the repairs.”

Straut said Norfolk Southern came out and made the repairs, but the repairs didn’t last a week. 

“I mean, I went out and looked at it the other day, and watched people come over the tracks, [and] if you don’t know to slow down to about five miles an hour, you’re going to lose the majority of your teeth,” the mayor said. “So, we again reached out to them, asking for the repairs.”

Part of the problem is Norfolk Southern’s tracks are crossing over the county-owned School Road, the mayor said, so the village’s “ability is limited other than to advocate for [Norfolk Southern] to do the repairs.”

Straut and Reilly have a call scheduled for April 4 with Norfolk Southern, which Straut said CSX had been invited to as well. 

“In the meantime,” the mayor said he’d also reached out to the state’s Department of Transportation to “let them know this concern.”

Quiet Zone

The village is now in its second decade of attempting to install four-quadrant safety gate systems at Main Street and Voorheesville Avenue, the purpose of which would be to keep train engineers from having to blow their horns as they pass through the village. 

Funding for the project has been in place for years, but actually getting someone to OK the allocation has been a different story. Recently, the village and Albany County, owner of the two Voorheesville roads slated to receive safety system upgrades, were notified of potentially hefty annual maintenance fees for the Quiet Zone. 

CSX in November 2020 reached an agreement to acquire Pan Am Railways and seven of its subsidiaries; Norfolk Southern owned a 50-percent stake in one of them. Norfolk Southern let its objection to the deal be known to the federal regulator overseeing the acquisition, which led to the freight carriers striking their own arrangement: Allowing Norfolk Southern to reconnect and use twice per day CSX’s line running through the village. 

Voorheesville was quick to raise its concerns about the proposal to the Surface Transportation Board, which caught the attention of CSX and Norfolk Southern and allowed all three to enter into discussions about a resolution, which was struck in December 2021 when the village agreed to withdraw its STB complaint. 

The village in return received separate commitments: CSX would continue to cooperate and assist in the ongoing design work, while separately the carriers both agreed “to advance the survey and design work for the Quiet Zone project.”

At the Albany County Legislature’s February meeting, members unanimously approved the county entering into a disbursement agreement with the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York for $340,000, which would “fully fund the design and construction of the Quiet Zone at two rail crossings,” according to a letter from County Executive Daniel McCoy to the legislature asking it to approve the agreement. 

But the DASNY grant requires the funds to be used on an asset that the recipient would have to have some type of ownership of or an extended lease interest in, which has been an issue with the Quiet Zone for some time. 

CSX typically owns the gates and charges municipalities to install and maintain the system; but in Voorheesville, the gates would be located on county land, which was thought to have helped solve the ownership issue.  

But, in just the past couple weeks, a letter was sent by the county to DASNY requesting its help in freeing up the funding. Straut said the letter was signed by McCoy, Senator Neil Breslin, Assemblywoman Patricia Fahy, and himself. 

Other money troubles also hit the project recently, like when it was announced in November that the December 2021 resolution between the village and freight carriers were stalled due to CSX’s request to the village and county for $50,000 per year in Quiet Zone maintenance costs.

 Straut said in November 2022 of the $50,000 request, it “came out of left field because there was no mention of maintenance” in the agreement. “I would have thought that would have been kind of laid out at that time.”

CSX has yet to offer the village an explanation about the maintenance costs.

At the March 28 village meeting, Straut said of the Quiet Zone, “We’ll get there, I’m still optimistic.”