Bringing back the old Beacon Incline Railway might be an uphill endeavor, but like the trip up Mount Beacon itself, the payoff is worth the effort.
That is the bottom-line rationale being cited by supporters to buttress the once-quixotic proposal to restore the famous Beacon Incline Railway, which they tout as an economic winner for the city and the entire region.
If all goes well with plans being put forth by sponsors of the effort, it could open in 2013, the Centennial year for the city of Beacon. Once the refurbished Incline Railway is operational, 415,000 annual visitors would come, almost 300,000 of them from outside the region, generating some $68 million worth of annual economic activity ”“ that”™s the plan.
“It will lift all the businesses in the Hudson Valley,” said Anne Lynch, president and CEO of the nonprofit Mount Beacon Incline Railway Restoration Association, who said to build a new rail line would cost about $14 million and restore a once famous tourist attraction.
The figures come from a study overseen by Dean Dudley, an associate professor of economics at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The study looked at three mid-Hudson sites that focus on outdoor recreation and two sites, in Pennsylvania and Tennessee, that have established tourist incline railways.
The Mount Beacon Incline Railway started operation in 1902 as a cable railway boarding at the base of Mount Beacon, traversing 2,200 feet of track rising 1,540 feet to the station at the top. The trip would take about five minutes. It was a great tourist attraction in its day, ridden by roughly 3.5 million people over its next 76 years. Its popularity waxed in the Roaring ”™20s, and waned in the Depression, revived as Post War Americans sought entertainment, declined in the 1960s, enjoyed a brief revival in the 1970s, stopped operating in 1978 and was destroyed by a fire in September 1983.
But the basic lures of 1,531-foot Mount Beacon remain, say supporters, bringing visitors atop a beautiful historic mountain amid state parkland, with sweeping views of the Hudson River at their feet and a glimpse on clear days of  the New York skyline and metro region south and the Catskills to the west.
Visitors could even see a famous new attraction looking northward to where the Walkway Over the Hudson rises a mere 212 feet over the river and joins Ulster and Dutchess counties.
The Walkway is a success story that serves as a model of what determined business-savvy volunteers can do to bring beneficial use from a historic wreck. The Walkway was a railroad trestle that languished for decades after a fire in the 1970s. It opened last October as a state park, with supporters estimating it would attract perhaps as many as 400,000 visitors its first year. It is instead on track to serve a million visitors in year one.
Michael Colarusso, chief operating officer for the restoration association, noted the tourism synergy of a walkway crossing the Hudson River in Pougkeepsie, and a mountaintop surrounded by miles of state parkland in Beacon and the town of Fishkill.
He said the current plan is to begin immediate fundraising for a railway museum that would  ideally be located at the east end of Main Street in the City of Beacon to bring tourists to downtown, where a mini-revival is already taking shape, with shops art galleries and eateries.
“Local businesses have a lot to offer,” Colarusso said. “We want to create an attraction that pulls people into our downtown.” Including the museum in the city  gives local businesses a good reason to support the entire endeavor, he said, and it would not be mere window dressing since Mount Beacon is a fascinating and historic place. In the Revolutionary War the  signal fires lit on its slopes gave the city and the mountain their names.
Shuttle buses would also lessen the ecological damage that Mount Beacon would suffer if a large parking lot and other infrastructure were required on site. Colarusso noted that the nonprofit group Scenic Hudson owns the land “They have done a wonderful job preserving and enhancing it and we don”™t want to change anything of he experience, we want to enable more people to enjoy the experience.”
He said the group seeks to use electric busses and rail cars and would not build snack bars or gift shops. “One of the goals we have is to go very light on the land here,” Colarusso said, adding that Scenic Hudson “agrees in principle” with the restoration idea and is seeking more details.
A call to Scenic Hudson seeking comment was not returned by press time.
