State on the wrong track?

Sunday, June 03, 2007

From an article by Susan Smith from the Wisconsin State Journal:

EDGERTON -- Henry Stockwell's got a problem with the railroad.

This year there were two derailments in two months in his Rock River neighborhood south of Edgerton; the February crash tossed a rail car up an embankment and within a few feet of the bedroom where his grandson was sleeping.

In May, Stockwell and neighbor Dave Markson stood along the tracks when a fact-finding train full of local officials chugged by, with signs reading, "Gov. Doyle Help Us!"

. . . Bill Gardner's got a problem, too, even though he runs the railroad. His Wisconsin & Southern Railroad runs on tracks owned by the state of Wisconsin. Gardner says he mailed the metal because some legislators aren't even aware that the state owns about 600 miles of tracks, acquired in the 1980s when railroads such as the Milwaukee Road went bankrupt.

"Why isn't the state interested in fixing up its own assets?" said Gardner, who has the blustering style of a railroad magnate from the 19th century. "Business (that uses rail) is coming in faster than the money to fix it. The state is happy to take the property tax and the payroll tax from those new businesses, yet they don't want to fix the ... railroad that brought in the businesses."