Ontario and Western, Lehigh and New England and Penn Central railroads. Under the ownership of Penn Central, traffic along the bridge route was discouraged in favor of a northern route through Selkirk; the use of newer technology at Selkirk Yard to improve efficiency was cited as the primary reason. At one point, the Poughkeepsie corridor had been the primary thoroughfare for freight being shipped to New England, and the New Haven yard at nearby Maybrook was once "the largest railroad yard east of the Mississippi River". Rail traffic over the Poughkeepsie Bridge stopped entirely after the bridge was damaged in a May 8, 1974 tie fire. After Penn Central went bankrupt, Conrail assumed control of the corridor, but opposed renovating it due to budgetary concerns. Rail traffic up to the bridge continued until March 1982, when Conrail received permission from the Interstate Commerce Commission to completely cease using the corridor; the tracks were removed the following year. Donald L. Pevsner, a transportation lawyer from Florida, secured a first-refusal option for purchasing the corridor to create restaurants and tourist attractions, but allowed it to expire on November 1, 1984, because he could not secure financial backing; he claims that Conrail expressed a desire to sell the corridor, at that point a potential liability, to the "first warm body" that would buy it. Conrail immediately sold the Poughkeepsie Bridge and adjoining rights-of-way on November 2, 1984, for one dollar to Gordon Schreiber Miller, a convicted bank fraudster who "seemed uncertain what he wished to do" with the corridor. Miller did not pay taxes, fines or insurance on the corridor, or maintain it. He went bankrupt in 1990 and sold the corridor for one dollar to his friend Vito Moreno, who also did not pay taxes on it. In 1991, Ulster County seized the right-of-way west of the Poughkeepsie Bridge and gave over of the abandoned corridor to the town of Lloyd. Conversion to trail Parcels of the right-of-way between Lloyd and the neighboring town of New Paltz were sold-off by the county shortly before ownership of the remaining corridor was transferred to Lloyd and converted to a rail-trail. Roughly $400,000 in funding to convert the corridor to a trail was acquired through an easement from the town of Lloyd to a broadband utility for the laying of fiber optic cable, though only $70,000 was needed to pave the trail. The trail remains