Of course, the jewel in the crown of the railfan-crayonista pipe dreams is the Westchester connection of a couple of the NYC commuter lines across the rebuilt Tappan Zee Bridge (at one point explicitly redesigned to carry a railroad line) and thence to 'fourth airport' Stewart and the Graham Line (admittedly an interesting vertical proposition...) Fun to map out what's potentially there, or used to be there and left us its grade, to accomplish some of the stuff. Not as "essential" as ON to Timmins, perhaps, but an interesting alternative for a surprising number of potential 'cohorts' to use, including low-income airport workers.
It would be simple as dirt operationally to restore commuter service on the ex-West Shore on the ex-four-track portion as far as Dumont: realign the sidings to be close to the current main, and lay the commuter track to the south. Sure, you'll have to make the ministorages and other 'encroaching' uses of the ROW whole, but we're talkin' government here.
North to Haworth, give me some of that you're smokin'. Beyond there toward Haverstraw... no.
Far more interesting is how you would route the West Shore trackage south of where Fricke's used to be, where the Suskie main comes in to parallel it and it goes across the long trestle. The tempting thing would be just to take the light rail as it goes through the tunnel under the Palisades and have the DMUs connect to the 'new' trackage. Now that we actually have constructed and proven the DMUs,and the hard part of the connections are made...
I'm still astounded the connections over the Lackawanna Cutoff, to Stroudsburg and extended up to Scranton, haven't been fast-tracked (no pun intended). The Martz lines won't like it, but look at the number of buses lined up on the Jersey side every day!
A couple of railcars on the Suskie via Hackensack won't break anybody's PSR day, although you'd need a waiver for sure to operate DMUs on anyone's idea of a useful schedule. CBTC would go a long, long way toward "reasonably safe enough" operation.
The implications of restoring the 'Bethlehem connection' are more interesting than just 'historic reconnection'. Note this goes hand-in-hand... or should, in my opinion at least... with re-establishing ABE rail connection that 12 miles to the Raritan Valley line. (I have not given up hope of extension north of Yardley and West Trenton on what is now the Lehigh Line, although PSR blocking of freights there, and full bidirectional-main double-tracking with CBTC, would sure be advisable if you did...)
Donning my honorary-Canadian hat: it is incomprehensible to me how the discussion of the Timmins service restoration has not contained the word 'hydrogen' yet. A potentially large number of otherwise-diligently-active PR people in Canada seem to have missed this, even as they tout it for Calgary-airport-to-resortland service far less suited to the current technology...
Here I guess it's a bit easier as the Ontario Northland ran the passenger service years ago and still runs freight. They own the tracks so it's not like on the West Shore where, when I lived in Poughkeepsie from 1979 to 1995 they were talking about restoring passenger service and I see it hasn't happened yet. Also passenger service to Scranton.
Not being Canadian it's not my place to say much, but here in the northeast US there's been squalks and "pie-in-the-sky" talks about commuter rail service on the Susquehanna, commuter rail on the old NYC's West Shore division, and now commuter rail in the greater Philadelphia area on the old Reading.
The problem is, those lines are now owned by CSX, NS, or in the case of the Suquehanna by both CSX and NS. Ain't gonna happen as far as I'm concerned, unless they're prepared to throw some heavy money at CSX and NS to make it happen, and even then I wouldn't hold my breath.
A pledge to restart rail service to Timmins! Sure! Doug Ford is sure throwing out the promises, anything to be re-elected in June.
https://globalnews.ca/news/8749975/toront-timmins-train-service-funding-pledge/
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