(The following story by Kathie Colgrove appeared on the Nassau County Record website on January 29, 2010.)
CALLAHAN, Fla. — When 62-year-old Mae Hailey gets home, she doesn’t just get out of her car and walk into the house. She loads her arms with groceries and stoops low enough to crawl under a railroad car blocking the access to her home.
A string of railroad cars has been parked there since Dec. 27. As of Monday afternoon, the train cars were still on the track.
“There’s no way out of there except across the railroad track,” Hailey said. “We have to crawl underneath the train, you know, to go anywhere. We can’t buy a whole lot of groceries. We have to buy a little at a time. We can’t carry all the groceries under that train.”
CSX spokesperson Gary Sease could not explain why the rail cars were parked there, nor did he know when they would be removed as of Tuesday afternoon.
Hailey has lived at the same address on Pickett Street for more than 50 years, but plans to move soon because of the hampered access. Even when train cars are not parked there, she still cannot park her vehicle at her home and hasn’t been able to ever since she’s lived there.
Hailey regularly parks her car at a neighbor’s house and crosses a railroad tie that bridges a ditch before she begins the uphill climb to trek across two sets of railroad tracks. The senior shares her home with her elder brother, Frank Cheavers, and her daughter, Rita Hailey. Her sister, Aretha Brown, also in her 60s, lives next door. Because her sister has no plans to move, her family’s safety remains an ongoing concern.
Hailey said she has had ongoing conversations with officials at CSX since the 1990s, but was told that a crossing will not be placed there.
In 2009, a CSX railroad investigator stopped her after she crossed the tracks from her home to get into the car.
“He didn’t stop me from getting into the car. He said, ‘Ma’am, did you come across the railroad tracks? You’re not supposed to do that,'” Hailey said. “I told him there is no other way to get to my house except to cross the track.”
She added that CSX planned to dig a ditch in front of her home to prevent her from coming out of her yard. The recently added train cars are nuisances, and have compounded Hailey’s concern about how she or her family might receive emergency assistance if necessary. As of right now, if an emergency arose at the home, rescue workers do not have access.
“I wish they would move that train and not put it there for spite,” she said. “And I know they’re doing it for spite.”
Since last spring, Nassau County Commissioner Junior Boatright said he has been working with Callahan Mayor Shirley Graham and Nassau County Attorney David Hallman to assist Hailey. He said she does not have legal permission to cross the railroad tracks.
“As we all know the railroad owns the property (on the tracks). Even the county can’t go in there and do anything on railroad property,” Boatright said.
He added that most likely, when Hailey’s father built the home years ago, access to the property was granted by a gentleman’s agreement.
“So for the last, I don’t know how many years, but it’s been a long time, they haven’t had the access,” he said. “They’ve just been crossing the tracks, going back and forth to the house.”
Two single family homes, one built in 1967, the other in 1976, sit on the one-acre property, according to Nassau County records.
Boatright and Graham have conducted research to determine where an access point could be opened for the family and for emergency ingress and egress. A neighbor has offered to provide a temporary easement for Hailey’s family. However, it will be some time before the easement is built.
“CSX has offered to use their manpower and their equipment if we can find the access point for them to help build them a driveway to alleviate the problem of them having to cross the railroad track to access their property,” Boatright said. “But it would be a temporary easement through this one gentleman’s property on that aspect of it. So it still wouldn’t alleviate the problem of whenever they decide to sell, whoever they sell to wouldn’t have access.”
Sease said a road survey is already underway and the project would start “very soon.”
“The plan is to put in place a temporary solution for access,” he said. “We plan to construct a temporary road parallel to the tracks that will give them access to a public road. With that, they’ll be able to access their property without coming into contact with our rail lines.”
Boatright said that he is empathetic to Hailey and her family’s lack of access. He attributes the blockage to surrounding neighbors who have lived there for four decades. Hailey’s property is completely landlocked.
“For whatever happened, they were just locked out by the surrounding land owners,” he said. “Even this temporary easement, so-called, is just basically going to be a long driveway just to allow them to be able to go in there and quit, you know, having to walk across the railroad track.”