Officials of the Catskill Mountain Railroad are screaming bloody murder about a website opposing the railroad's plans to expand, which are currently under review by the Legislature's Ulster & Delaware Corridor Advisory Committee. Because one of the U&D committee's members are affiliated with the website, Kingston Ashokan Trail, (KAT), the railroad's officials says their opponents have blindsided them in a way that threatens CMRR's continued existence.

The railroad's complaints are just the latest development in the long-running feud between trail enthusiasts and CMRR, further complicating a decade's worth of efforts to find a compromise between the two sides' visions — tourism and history for railers, recreation and sustainability for trailers.

The KAT website is a joint effort of the Woodstock Land Conservancy (WLC) and Friends of the Catskill Mountain Rail Trail (CMRT), the former chaired by Kevin Smith and the latter including as member Ulster County Legislator Kathy Nolan, a member of the U&D advisory board. Up and running since June 2024, KAT posted a call in early November to rule out the CMRR'S proposed Basin Road extension — the current major topic of debate in the feud.

“After years of evaluation and discussion, we think it’s time for all parties to acknowledge that ‘Rail-With-Trail’ is not a viable option in portions of the corridor [italics ours],” the site states, pointing to environmental, engineering, fiscal and other issues. “Instead of focusing on creative but unrealistic approaches to accommodating both rail and trail on the corridor, we urge the County to prioritize trail connectivity first, and to retain tourist train uses only where doing so does not preclude the trail.”

In a Jan. 25 press release, CMRR says the KAT site “appears to completely undermine the U&D Corridor Committee’s work.”

“[The KAT website] was never mentioned by Smith or Nolan at the [Jan. 23] meeting,” CMRR wrote in its release, “and appears to completely undermine the U&D Corridor Committee’s work ... Unlike the CMRR, the Woodstock Land Conservancy has never made a presentation of its vision for the corridor to the U&D Corridor Committee. ... The unwillingness of the WLC and the CMRT to allow for the U&D Corridor Committee to reach a decision on the undesignated section without presenting their vision, and go beyond to advocate complete removal of the railroad, shows they have complete disrespect for the process. The Ulster County Legislature's intent was to determine policy for the undesignated segment of the U&D Corridor, not to undo the carefully negotiated compromise worked out 10 years ago by the previous U&D Committee.”

The “carefully negotiated compromise” refers to County Resolution 488, which in late 2015 appeared to quell the two sides' feuding. It states, among other things, “the segmented approach to the corridor, which includes railroad-only segments, trail-only segments and rail-with-trail segments, will maximize the public benefits.”

As to the Basin Road extension, the resolution reads, “the segment between MP 8.33 and Basin Road will require further investigation on the future feasibility of rail with trail and shall be the last segment to be altered or converted on the east side of the Ashokan provided that trail connectivity co-located on the corridor shall be preserved.”

“We are not, we have not and are not calling for the complete elimination of the Catskill Mountain Railroad,” WLC's Kevin Smith said in a phone interview. “We think it's important for the public to know that in addition to the railroad company's constant stream of press releases and in our view, misrepresentations about what's possible and feasible in the undesignated section of the corridor, that the railroad company has additionally engaged in aggressive and provocative actions and behavior that indeed call into question their intentions and attestations of operating in good faith and consistent with upholding their permit requirements and county policy period.”

Kingston Wire spoke with Hunt in a phone interview and asked how it is that he sees the KAT site as “eliminationist.”

“The way I read it is that they're pulling the whole railroad up ... There's two things – referring to Resolution 275 [which the KAT site mentions in passing and which in 2014 did call for the railroad's removal], and then throwing out a $50 million number for doing [rail with trail] from Kingston to Basin Road. There's no number in here for just a two-mile section. So we read this as being everything, and the map is also shows everything too.”

We also asked about CMRR's press release's statement that the KAT website “directly contradicts the resolution which the new U&D Corridor Committee was founded on which stated clearly that it would “ensure continued benefits of rail events to businesses in Uptown Kingston,” referring to a May 2024 resolution, which reads in whole: “WHEREAS, the Ulster County Legislature desires to clarify available options for ‘ensuring continued benefits of rail events to businesses in Uptown Kingston and for expanding trail use throughout the U&D corridor by addressing the feasibility [italics ours] of rail with trail, rail-only and trail-only approaches as policy for the undesignated section.”

On that point Hunt replied, “We thought that the current resolution was very clear that the railway trail had already been established because it was basically decided policy. And by basically showing that they're going to hold their figures towards doing trail only all the way to Kingston, that looks like they're trying to challenge the existing policy.”

In the press release, Hunt stated:

“The Catskill Mountain Railroad has reached out to Kevin Smith and the Woodstock Land Conservancy numerous times over the past 10 years trying to work together with them to create a parallel trail beside the railroad from Kingston to the Ashokan Reservoir. But our overtures were always spurned. I guess that since they felt they had the legislature and the county executive in their pocket so they never thought they needed to work with us.”

As to Nolan, CMRR says “she is obviously in conflict between her advocacy of the WLC and the CMRT (which is part of the Woodstock Land Conservancy) and her role as an Ulster County legislator. If true, the CMRR believes she should immediately step down from her position on the U&D Corridor Committee.”

Nolan, in a phone interview in which she said the KAT site was not something she had been aware of, had this to say: “The CMRR has brought advocacy to the legislature, to the municipalities near the undesignated section, and had it on their website for nearly the entire time since that compromise that they wanted. That was not in the spirit of the agreement, as I understood it, but they're an advocacy group so that's what they did now that the legislature is looking at this. ... I think it's entirely appropriate for any stakeholder to bring forward their opinion at this time. I don't understand the CMRR's position that they're the only ones who get to advocate for what they want.”