In Stillwater, Minnesota the city forced the abandonment of the track through downtown and to the south about 3/4 of a mile to the driveway for Sunnyside Marina. I’m pretty sure this section was yet BN when the city pushed it through I think in 2005. So who owns the land and the track, the city, county, state or?
That ex-NP trackage was owned by BNSF. Usually ‘deals’ like this are arranged by all parties concerned. BNSF really had no use for the trackage(no customer activity). BNSF could apply with the federal regulators to abandon service/trackage and then be free to pick up the rails and sell off the property. In the case of this trackage, there was already a ‘deal’ in the works for some urban renewal(paid for by your tax dollars).
The ex-Milw line that came into Bayport/Stillwater from Hastings was abandoned many years ago. The Milw made their case that no captive shippers(like the cannery in Lakeland) would be affected, and arranged trackage rights or haulage over the C&NW to Bayport(Anderson Window). They then picked up the track and sold off the property. At one point the ‘rails to trails’ groups want to build a bike path on the ROW, but many of the local landowners were against it and bought up the ROW so that that would not happen.
Some ROW may automatically return to the city if arrangements were made back in the ‘day’ to attract the railroad to run through the city. One has to read the ‘fine print’ of the original agreement.
Jim
It can depend on the land deeds. Take for instance the abandoned San Ramon Branch of the SP in west/central California. To entice the SP to build the branch, some communities and individuals donated cash or land. Grant deeds specified land was to be returned when it was no longer used for railroad purposes. After the end of about 80 years of operations, the heirs of former landowners had legal battles for the land’s return when SP abandoned the line.
Mark
Abandonment is only the relinquishment of the obligation of common-carrier service, and the rights that obtain. It has nothing to do with the track or land. A railway abandoning common-carrier service may choose to retain the land, and the track materials in place.
The track and other improvements belong to the railway until at such time it sells it, to any party that wishes to buy at the proffered price. Or it could leave them there forever, if it wished, so long as it complied with zoning ordinances, environmental regulations, and so forth.
The land is almost always the railway’s land to sell as well, whenever it wishes. The primary exception are when the railway rests upon land it uses through a license with an owner (such as a municipality in a city street, where the street came first and the railway second.)
Reversionary rights held by adjacent landowners who granted the railway the land conditional upon railway service are not by any means the dominant form by which land was obtained by railways. Most rights-of-way lands were acquired fee simple and are held fee simple.
“Forced” abandonment is a loaded term. Cities can’t force abandonments for their convenience. They have to file a petition for adverse abandonment with the STB, and prove to the STB that rail service is not needed and the public convenience and necessity of rail service is not diminished. Adverse abandonments are a tough road. Generally the railway is all too happy to abandon the line on its own, as it has no interest in incurring liability and expense for
RWM: What happens to the ROWs that have other items on them? Many abandoned and removed tracks in south GA have fiber optic, telephone, high tensions lines etc still on the ROW. Property deeds show still owned by the original RR or sucessor. A couple proposed Rail - Trails in Florida are encountering this problem.
If the RR has FEE TITLE (sole title which they may sell) then they continue to pay taxes on the property, and receive any revenue generated by the other occupants who are there with a contractural agreement with the RR. This is the same as any other owner would do when the original use for the property was no longer worthwhile.
Each State would appear to have its own Laws.
In Connecticut, if the railroad bought the land they built on, they own it, pay taxes on it, in use or not. But, the New Haven Railroad is long gone and they had owned it all.
If the current operator owner of a line wants to stop operation, too bad. If the “Right of Way” was originally given to the railroad by “Eminent Domain”, it reverts to the state with improvments (rails) in place. The state finds a “Desiganted Operator” or can convert it to a “Rail Trail”. The Housatonic line and the Hartford to Middletown line have been returned to service. The Canal Line has become a Rail Trail.
RWM & Diningcar pretty well hit it on the nailhead.
(1) Local entities have little or no control over the abandonment process. Fortunately the STB trumps the “good ol’ boy” network that is largely clueless and often controlled by the whims of developers, etc. (The STB website is full of the cases where these clowns have “stepped in it”…Search Creede, Raytown, Kershaw Sunnyside, Yolo, Roberts Construction and a host of others that have recently popped up as dockets. Some of these folks eventually get their way, BUT only after embarrassing themselves and wasting mucho public funds they didn’t have to spend in the first place after being made aware of the adverse abandonment process.)
(2) Color of title is a large part of the answer but not all. The title documents can be over-ruled along with grant reversion at federal level in cases of National Interim Trail use (NITU= Rails/Trails or Railbanking) where the corridor is preserved for trails, land grants to public roads, etc…You have to learn the ropes or you may find yourself ringing the wrong bell. Failure to follow through with the regulations, frequently makes Rails/Trails attempts fail. Far too many trails advocates may mean well, their expections are high - but the outcome is not in their favor because they have neither the resourses, the responsibility or the smarts.
(3) Going back to th original question, go look at STB Docket(s) AB-6-(413X) and AB-882(2X) on the STB Website for BNSF + Minnesota Commercial. There are no apparent OFA’s or NITU requests for the lines in question, so it appears BNSF still owns the underlying land and is looking to dispose of it for the right price. The nearby UP CNW abandoment(AB-33 (234X) between Stillwater and Bayport was sold to local government with UP reserving themselves an easement where the track was.
ICC/STB calls the shots here. Everything else is secondary. (CT bought their ex-NH assets