I was wondering if anyone can give me information on what happens to the “right of way” after a railroad is granted permission to abandon. Does the right of way revert to the local township and what happens to the rail and physical plant if the railroad does not remove the rail? I have a particular interest in old B&M rails in the north of Boston area.
Railroad property generally was purchased from private owners (willingly or unwillingly) with the caveat that upon abandonment it reverts back to the original owners or their successors. It’s only been in the last few decades that rights-of-way have been purchased by governments or businesses (i.e. utilities) for potential future use. Anything physically left on the property is presumed to belong to the property owner.
It all depends on the original deed or documents of sale. If the railroad owned the land ‘free & clear’ - it is still their land and they can offer it for sale. If there was some kind of sale conditions, it may go back to the original land owner. Most of the Federal land grant properties(Kansas Pacific/Central Pacific/Union Pacific/Northern Pacific) were deeded to the railroads when they completed the lines. A number of small towns lured’ railroads to build through their town with land grants that reverted back to the land owner if the railroad was pulled up. ‘Rail to Trail’ efforts many times run into issues due to the original land documents or private parties buying up sections of the roadbed before the trail organizations can secure funding.
The bottom line is the same for ex-roadbed and any other land that was abandoned - it was private property and ‘public domain’ really has little to say. Of course, the railroad will still need to pay any property taxes or face a court ordered sale to the highest bidder.
Jim
Cessna, when I was in the Boston area for collage back in the 1960’s, I would see all of those wonderful B & M and NH ROWs being abandoned right and left and wrote a number of papers about the utter foolishness of giving up these valuable access pathways when future use would be eliminated. Not too many people in those days listened to me, obviously! Rails to Trails was one response to this waste but unless future rail use is stipulated, apparently, the trails folks don’t want to give them back.
(1) Go verify if it’s really abandoned (Verify thru the STB, it’s online if the abandonment is newer than 1996-2000…early documents don’t always show up as pdf’s or HMTL data…It’s still on film somewhere.)
(2) If it’s an abandonment (officially, verified consumation at STB) that happened after 1976, the next step is to verify that is not NITU (Notice of Interim Trail Use), ie- a rail trail. IF it is (and many that claim to be are NOT), then the dually registered trail authority is the owner of the right-of-way corridor and that probably has a deed saying so. In essense, any deed with a reversionary clause in it takes a back seat to the NITU official notice at STB. Unless the trails group fails to live up to its responsibities or some railroad steps in to repurchase the R/W to run an operating railroad again, the R/W remains a trail.
(3) If (1) happened and (2) did not, then the original deeds and the color of title (what jim is talking about) starts to come into play. You have to go look an see how the railroad acquired the right of way in the first place. There is no single blanket rule to say that that property automatically reverts. There is plenty of abandoned R/W from 50+ years ago out there that is still owned by a railroad at some level. (and I’ll betcha your county assessor and GIS people are clueless about what happened. You really have to see what the document says. You are going to have to sort out things like:
- Warrantee Deeds
- Quit Claim Deeds
- Right of Way Deeds
- “Wild” Deeds
- Bargain and Sale Deeds
- Court Decrees / Condemnations
- Easements
- Ordinances
- Charters
- Prescripive Rights / Adverse Possession
- Contracts/Permits/Licenses
- Legislative Acts
- Grants (of all sorts), and so on.
Sometimes railroads can sell off the surplus property and sometimes they can’t. (same idea applies to rail trail operators
One strategy used by the former Santa Fe was to sell, in rural areas, to the adjacent landowner if the title was merchantable (deemed to be owned in fee) and then to file a Declaration of Abandonment in each county describing those parcels which were not merchantable. The D of A took the property off the tax rolls and allowed whomever may have rights to the individual parcels to perfect their right by a Quiet Title proceedure or whatever may work in that State.
Each State has different laws, or judicial decisions rendered, which governed how this may be done and how merchantable title is determined.
In urban areas where title was merchantable Santa Fe sold to those who may have a commercial use. There were apt to be several adjacent owners who would not-could not pay the commercial price. Some urban ROW has significant commercial value as in Colorado Springs as MC will recall. Urban values of merchantable parcels were very significant in California as well.
There is no one answer as many forums and threads before have determine. Each railroad in each location with each property owner often have different terms. Easement, lease, own, return to original deed holder, present to current deed holder, sell ROW to new owner, deed to a government or agency or authority, retain deed and lease or sell for utility use (pipeline, telephone cable, electric transmission). It is a lawyers dream…but nothing can be assumed.
The RR row often sits in the twilight zone for years untill its been “Discovered”…since many railroads also had power lines and fiber optics in them the utlitys take over the easements. Countys and States have first dibs in the right of way…sometimes rail trail groups claim ownership even after the right of way been gone for 80 years because the land deeds sat for that long. There is also the nightmare of toxic residue that makes no one want the land anyway
In the '80s the State of Michigan bought many miles of abandoned rail lines and “railbanked” them, leaving the tracks in place for potential future use, and to prevent the brake-up of the corridors. After a while IIRC they passed legislation that allowed the rails to be removed, but to save the ROW for future possible re-installation of rails. Thus in the '90s hundreds of miles of those abandoned rail lines were dismantled and converted to trails.
On top of all of the above - which is quite valid, accurate, and valuable - Massachusetts is a unique state (actually, one of 4 “Commonwealths”, but I digress . . . ) in the US in having a system to “register” land. See:
http://www.sec.state.ma.us/rod/rodmidsth/msfaq.htm#diff (short explanation)
http://www.deeds.com/information/Recorded-Land-and-Registered-Land-in-Massachusetts-1342724760.html (moderate length)
“A Brief History of the Land Court 1898 - 2012” (really detailed & technical) - http://www.mass.gov/courts/courtsandjudges/courts/landcourt/lchist3.html
No idea if any railroads or adjoining property owners did this, which might well affect the legal status of the railroad’s R-O-W.
- Paul North.
DC: I also remember, after the Colorado Springs abandonment, helping the company beat off dime-store lawyers, squatters and crooks that tried to steal land along Shooks Run and Las Vegas St. multiple times. BNSF is still having issues along Las Vegas St near the sewage treatment plant south of downtown CS caused by blunders in the El Paso County Assessor’s office and arrogance at CS city hall.
Massachusetts DOT has a well deserved reputation for being about as dumb as they come in terms of what they did with and how they managed land they acquired from PC, NH and others. (they never even got maps from PC of some of the lines, even after PC tried to turn over the records during the sale … somebody ought to write a book about the Old Colony fiasco )
NYS took ownership of the old NYC Adirondack Division and it is designated as a transportation corridor, used by the RR in summer and snowmobiles in winter. The tracks are still in place on what Conrail was still operating in 1974.
That hasn’t stopped a very vocal group from campaigning to have the rails lifted so the corridor can be turned into a “world class trail.” Or at least that’s what they claim they want to happen.
There is a growing group that says the trail advocates’ true goal is to simply get the tracks (and the snowmobiles) out of the forest.
As NYS owns the line outright, they’ve said that if the tracks come up, the land will go to adjacent landowners, which for much of the line is… New York State.
- This topic has been discussed here before several times. Do a search to find those threads - there’s lots more good info (and some not so good . . . ) to be found there.
- Modern “railbanking” got its start in 1976 when Congress provided 180 days after abandonment for potential interested trail owners to “speak now or forever hold their peace” by buying the R-O-W.
- In 1983 Congress enacted Sec. 8(d) of the National Trails System Act, which for 30 years now has governed subsequent abandonments only.
- Those claiming potential “reversionary rights” to the R-O-W may complain, but in 1990 the U.S. Supreme Court essentially held that a properly executed conversion to trail use “trumps” or supersedes any private or other owner’s claim to the land. The Court went on to state that the purported owner’s remedy for such a “taking” of its R-O-W is to file a 5th Amendment claim for “just compensation” against the U.S. government.
For more info on this, see the following webpages by the Rails-to-Trails group (yes, I know they’re not neutral or unbiased, but it is fairly complete and concise for the complexity of the topic - if there are better webpages, please post links here too):
http://www.railstotrails.org/resources/documents/resource_docs/Railbankingreport_7-06_lr.pdf - see especially the "Railbanking in the Courts" section on page 7 of 12
I think it was around 1990 that the issue of ROW abandonments went to the state Supreme Court of Minnesota. I don’t remember the exact wording of the ruling but the ruling gives much leverage to railbanking and trails in Minnesota over the sale to nearby property owners. The reason for the ruling having leverage to railbanking and trails is the ROW continues to be a transportation corridor, or it is held for future transportation needs. The Gateway trail just to the west of me has a LOT of people using it. When I went there late last summer in the early evening I saw about 10 to 20 people per minute passing me as I walked. After seeing so many of them getting exercise and thinking about the growing weight problem in our society I became a greater fan of bike trails that day. Do you ever see a person who is exercising that looks depressed? The Minnesota Zephyr ROW is right behind the house I live in. Track removal started last fall. Only a little bit of rail is still in one pile and a few truck loads of ties are left to haul away. It is to be the Gateway Browns Creek Trail. Next to go for a trail is the 4000 or so feet of track from the south end of Stillwater Mn to the crossing at Sunnyside Marina. Sunnyside where the UP track ended and “I think” BNSF track ran into downtown Stillwater.
There actually are many maps available to show abandoned railroads…Rand McNally and several others have done map series over the years…check the fan mags for advertisements or on line.
The SPV series seems to be fairly complete with regard to former ROWs. Of course, they don’t get into the details of land ownership - they just show about where they are.
Acme Mapper includes topo maps in their selection - you can find a location using the maps or satellite images, then swing over to the topo maps. Of course, they don’t show ownership either, but can help give an indication of what municipalities are involved.
My county has all of the tax maps on line, so you can see who is currently acknowledged (for tax purposes) to be the owner. Other locales may have the same resource.