(Editor's Note: The following letter was addressed to LIRR President Thomas Prendergast and is printed at the author's request.)

Did we receive a New Year's gift from the LIRR or just a sign of things to come? Why else would there be nine freight cars parked in front of the homes along St. James Streets North and South in Garden City, since before New Year's Eve -- five days so far!

Was there any possible reason why these cars could not have been "abandoned" at the end of the railroad spur in the old freight yard at the end of Commercial Avenue? After all, a much larger (52-car) Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Bailey Circus train manages to spend several days out of sight in that location when the circus is at the Coliseum.

In this age of "instant sound bites," people's attention span and interest can only be sustained for a short period of time -- even on really big issues. It looks like the LIRR is counting on just that -- a lack of sustained interest on the part of the Village and its residents regarding freight trains. We haven't made any real noise about these trains in quite some time. Although they have not been of the revenue-producing variety, we have had freight trains, and are likely to have them in ever-increasing numbers once the governor's moratorium ends on Dec. 31 of this year!

The LIRR has all but ignored its obligations under the Agreement signed by the Village with them and the proposed new freight carrier, the New York and Atlantic Railroad. The LIRR has never produced a new Environmental Review to replace the very flawed Environmental Assessment which brought public outrage two years ago. It is quite obvious now that if and when the LIRR does produce anything, a review paid for by and produced for the LIRR, it will once again find nothing wrong with freight trains of any kind traversing our residential Village day or night.

Any future trains will not only directly impact the few houses which currently have cars parked in front of them, but several thousand homes in Garden City and other villages along the Hempstead Line, all of our busy railroad intersections, our close-by schools and playgrounds, and our business districts, on which Garden City is about to spend several million dollars to beautify and hopefully encourage revitalization by the infusion of new tenants.

The New Year's holiday is now over. A diesel engine has just arrived along with lots of railroad equipment and personnel and a noisy rail-removal-for-storage-along-the-tracks operation has just begun. If the LIRR was trying to be a good neighbor, it would have taken its rail-laden hoppers across the tracks on Clinton Road and parked them behind the commercial buildings or in the old freight yard last week, instead of storing them in front of our homes for the holidays. As I surmised it must have been a New Year's gift from the LIRR to the residents of Garden City. I hesitate to think what the future may bring.

Sue Davis

P.S. Residents -- please don't remain silent and think others will take care of the problem. Let your local officials and political leaders hear your voices, read your words. They only act when your concerns are made known to them. When they hear nothing, they can only assume it's not a problem. We vote for them to act on behalf of our concerns. They've been responsive to us in the past on this issue. Let's remind them that we expect them to continue to be so.