The reason I ask is I recently acquired a copy of an agreement between the cities of Seaside, Monterey and Caltrans which requires those cities to retain a 40 foot wide railroad right of way for public transit purposes. This dates back to a 1982 acquisition of the right of way by those two cities from milepost 123.3 in Seaside to milepost 125.81 in Monterey. The map accompanying the document is not very clear, but it appears milepost 125.81 is at the original train station in Monterey.
Monterey currently has plans to develop the station property for recreational use and a parking lot, which would be in violation of this agreement as I understand it. I want to confirm the location of milepost 125.81 to see if it is inside out outside the area of proposed development.
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Trust God, love your neighbor, and never mistake opinion for truth.
-Mr. Toy
Your biggest problem is that this land belonged to the Southern Pacific Railroad. It appears the property was placed into rail bank status 20 years ago. You are going to have a bit of a challenge. I will not lay favorable odds on the Union Pacific Division Superintendents office even maintaining detailed map coverage anymore.
One option is to get a hold of an Espee employee timetable from before the stoppage of service on the line. With luck, it will have *some* terrain feature you can work from. Then, it's a matter of 1/100 mi=52.8 feet, 1/10 mi=528 feet.
Your next option is to go to the Planning and Zoning offices for Monterey County, and ask for the plat map supporting your document.
Following that, you may try, if California ever got to a state level "Freedom of Information Act", to go to CalTrans in Sacto and see what they have.
Your resource of last resort will be the Library of the University of California at Berzerkely. Espee may well have donated a major chunk of their corporate records to Cal when they went out of business as a result of the SP-UP merger.
Before going any further in cartographic research, you may want to get the full agreement: Intergovernmental agreements at the state/local level quite often have a 7-10 year shelf life.
I would not hold my breath on any of this. All it will take to nullify this agreement is two County Boards of Supervisors (maybe only one) and Caltrans saying the recreational use is in "the greater public good."
John
who remembers his administrative law from his MPA degree program...
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The City of Saint Louis (UP, 1967) is still my standard for passenger operations
[This message has been edited by SteveD (edited 07-19-2002).]
One way or another, Toy has to go to the County Seat.
I still won't be surprised if the proposed use gets declared "in the greater public good."
John
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The City of Saint Louis (UP, 1967) is still my standard for passenger operations
I hope this item answers your question!
-- Daniel
Do you know if older versions of the Altamont Press timetables are available? Since the Monterey line is out of service it might not be listed.
Mr. Toy,
Another idea is to look for an old employee timetable for sale from collectors or on ebay. Might cost a bit but it would have a treasure trove of info.
MP
Pullman you commented:
quote:
I would not hold my breath on any of this. All it will take to nullify this agreement is two County Boards of Supervisors (maybe only one) and Caltrans saying the recreational use is in "the greater public good."
Neither the county or Caltrans is the problem. It is the city of Monterey that wants to develop this land for recreation. Monterey County and Caltrans are pushing ahead to get rail service reinstated, and the eventually expect to get it to Monterey, so neither of them are likely to back out of it. It is Monterey itself that is trying to get out of the deal, even though it was given a 50 year renewal in January 2000.
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Trust God, love your neighbor, and never mistake opinion for truth.
-Mr. Toy
What action can I take that will get me the greatest number of votes at re-election time?
Cynically, John