Museum trying to get back on track, according to the September 4, 2007, edition of The Express-Times.

The museum reporter Sara Satulla refers to is the New Jersey Railroad and Transportation Museum, a subject about which the www.billybytes.blog/com/ blog has written extensively.

This blog’s creator and editor, Billy Givens, was also a founder 20 years ago of the Paulinskill Valley Trail in New Jersey’s Warren and Sussex counties before relocating to Easton, Pennsylvania in 1987.

The Express-Times reported extensively on the trail during its transfomation from an abandoned railroad bed to the latest addition to the Garden State’s park system, administered first by Swartswood State Park in Sussex County and later by Jenny Jump State Park in Warren County.

All of The Express-Times’s reporters at the time have long since left for other careers, retirment, or positions with other newspapers except one: Anthony Salamone.

On December 11, 1988, Salamone and his paper published an article titled “Warren society backs proposal for old railbed, carrying the sub-caption “Group’s support also urged for rail museum in P’burg,” meaning Phillipsburg, New Jersey.

Salamon wrote: “Bill Givens of Easton, a member of the Paulinskill Valley Trail Committee, got the group’s support to help convince government officials that an old railbed in northern Warren County should be made into a recreational trail.

The group referred to was the Warren County Historical and Genealogical Society, headquartered in Belvidere, New Jersey, the seat of Warren County.

Salamone continued: “Givens told the group the Paulinskill Trail area has historical significance. He said there are artifacts along the railbed, including a viaduct that was built in the early 1900s.

“In addition to its recreational possibilities, Givens said, the area needs to be conserved because it runs through flood plains.”

Salamone then quoted Jay Miers, Warren County director of economic development, who “spoke about the process by which Phillipsburg has become one of four sites that might become the the home of a state railroad museum.”

Miers said, “An observation deck on Mount Parnassus would allow visitors to see the area’s three canals and five railroads served.”

Phillipsburg, beating out its three competitors, was chosen as the museum’s site, vindicating Miers’s claim that Phillipsburg’s 70-acre Delaware River Park, located off South Main Street, “would make a prime location for the museum’s main building,” adding, “The railway museum could spread to additional properties in the town.”

As Salamone wrote, “The Phillipsburg proposal includes a two-phase project built on land owned by the town, Conrail, New Jersey Transit and individuals.”

Along the way, the museum’s Phillipsburg site fell into the hands of Phillipsburg native Michael Perrucci, who plans to build luxury condominiums there instead.

Perrucci has also been involved in the Ingersoll-Rand property controversy in Phillipsburg and also in the BethWorks Now Casino LLP, of which he is a partner, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

The posting of this blog is meant especially for Hellertown, Pennsylvania, resident Ron Shegda. His run as a write-in candidate against incumbent 136th legislative district representative Robert Freeman has inspired Givens to run as a write-in candidate this year for the position of Easton Mayor.

The cornerstone of Givens’s campaign will be the natural versus the main-made environment, concentrating on the proposed construction of Easton’s Riverwalk and Bushkill Creek Corridor “new urban village” in the Delaware River and Bushkill Creek flood plain.