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I recently walked the stretch of the Remsen to Lake Placid Railroad corridor from where it crosses the Old Military Road near the firehouse in Lake Placid to where the Scarface Mountain hiking trail crosses the tracks. It’s a bit over four miles. The rails have been removed, and there were small piles of them stacked on the rail side, and many of the ties were loose. There were steel plates that held the rails to the ties and lots of railroad spikes were strewn on the disheveled ties. The removal of the steel rails is the first stage of the transformation of this long-defunct railroad into a public multi-use recreation trail.
The railroad corridor is thickly forested, mostly typical northern upland forest at the Lake Placid end, but cuts through boreal habitat and wetlands with some stands dominated by red pines. The rail corridor shares space in this stretch with the utility lines to Lake Placid. The poles have all been recently rebuilt and the new fiber optic line hangs on them.
The New York State Departments of Transportation and Environmental Conservation, in cooperation with the State Office of General Services, today announced a major milestone in the development of the world-class Adirondack Rail Trail, a 
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ARTA to NYS: Let’s speed up the rail trail construction
“Use and misuse of the travel corridor through the Adirondacks.” That’s the subject of a letter to Gov. Andrew Cuomo from Adirondack Recreational Trail Advocates, the nonprofit that’s been working for many years to establish a 90-mile recreational trail through the Adirondack Park from Lake Placid to Old Forge. ARTA achieved partial success when the state announced its grand compromise back in 2015 — 34 miles of the old railroad line would be converted to a year-round recreational trail linking Lake Placid, Saranac Lake and Tupper Lake. The rest of the state-owned “travel corridor” would be devoted to creating the longest tourist train ride in the country.
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