One-seat ride to 'fourth airport'

[henry6]

Geography and topography prevents any connection west of the Moodna Viaduct. from Stewart.  Either the Newburg branch has to be rebuilt along Rt 32 to the line at the old Newburg Jct or it be connected to the RIver Line (CSX has a red board out on that  of course) or across a new Tappan Zee Bridge to the MNRR Hudson Line...at least those are the plans being discussed so far. It is a NYS Dot and MNRR call.

[Overmod]

Coming out of the discussion of the '7 line' as a candidate for the one-seat interairport service, what arrangements ought to be made for 'one-seat' access to the fourth airport, in Orange County where Stewart AFB was.

The least expensive option to get service into this airport is to branch off the Port Jervis line north of Salisbury Mills/Cornwall.  But this is just across the single-track-and-likely-to-remain-so Moodna Viaduct.  It is also firmly in NON-electrified territory, and likely to remain so (particularly with subway-style third rail!)  Construction of a new line to Stewart, perhaps routed via one of the old routes from the West via Maybrook or Campbell Hall, might be technically possible but almost impossible to justify.

The el cheapo 'best approximation' to single-seat -- in the absence of heavy-rail service to the three existing PA airports, which seems unlikely to me -- involves one transfer, at Secaucus, between the light rail airport services and the Bergen/Main lines that transition to the Port Jervis line at Suffern.  (As I argued elsewhere, dedicated service from Secaucus to Stewart could be performed with dual-power railcars to produce the frequency of service required, with the optional ability to use the normal approach to NYP, or to operate on other NJT/MNCR services).  The old Colorado Railcar company had worked out FRA compliance for this type of vehicle if that turns out to be a design concern.

The other approach is some kind of timed or coordinated road service between Beacon (on the River Line) and Stewart, similar to what Leprechaun now does on a less-integrated basis.  It occurs to me that you could build buses similar in principle to the Evans Road-Railers, with more modern active suspension and genset drive, with floor height equivalent to subway platform and movable ramp (as in low-floor buses) to match other platform heights where different.  These would run in a manner similar to the proposed systems for 'mobile jetways' -- you'd transition from the 7 line extension (or some part of the extended 34th Street complex, however that develops) up the Empire Connector, over at Spuyten Duyvil to the River Line and up to Beacon, then change mode to road and go across the bridge to access the airport.

Potentially this system would also provide last-mile access to the odd terminals at LGA, or (with adaptation to suit IND clearances) out to where the Train to the Plane's transfer took place... but now with no transfer.

I am tempted to note that transit-weight trains might be a logical thing to consider running over a restored Poughkeepsie Bridge, seeing how close Stewart is to some of the ROWs that go there.  Whether the bridge could be restored for that service is another question entirely (the experience with the Riverside viaduct, and the Portal Bridge replacement, indicate that it might easily be more than the cost of a whole new bridge) but I can at least throw it out there.

I don't have access to the initial surveys for the proposed Tappan Zee rail connector, but rather obviously some reconstruction of the Erie's original main line to Piermont gets you out to where you could access the Port Jervis (or Pascack Valley, which runs into Suffern) line.

Who has thoughts, materials, etc.?