In case you missed it in Flimsies, here is a challenge to rails-to-trails in Minnesota that could open up a can of worms for that movement. In this case, the rails are long gone, but anyone care to speculate how this could affect potential non-common carrier museum operations that might be given track left in place by a RR?

http://wcco.com/localnews/local_story_254103521.html
ryarger@rypn.org

In this case, the rails are long
> gone, but anyone care to speculate how this
> could affect potential non-common carrier
> museum operations that might be given track
> left in place by a RR?

It depends exactly what the documents say.

I Am Not A Lawyer, but as I see it in the Minnesota case, the landowners are correct: the easement says if the RAILROAD is abandoned, the property rights revert back to the adjacent property owners. It's probably a fine point of legal fine print, but I believe transfer of a track from one corporate entity to another (after all, there was a predecessor company to BNSF, and BN, and probably its predecessor's predecessor as well) is covered, but NOT, as an example, the laying of a pipeline or power line over same ROW.

The interesting point in this case is that the article expressly states that IN THIS CASE an alternate routing of the trail IS available through adjacent or nearby state-owned lands. Were that every trail in such circumstances were so lucky.

In any case, a point of order: railroad transportation fulfills more common good, IMO, than snowmobiles roaring up and down a winter wonderland. I can understand a NIMBY attitude more with the latter than the former.


LNER4472-NOSPAM-@bcpl.net

I am not a lawyer either. I keenly watched a local rr branch go through abandonment, potential conversion to rails to trails, much hoopla about adjacent landowners receiving their share of the ROW in opposition to Rails to Trails and finally an 11th hour sale of the line which still had track in place to a newly formed public RR authority, just as a salvage company had moved on site. Some or perhaps many adjacent landowners were dissapointed to find out that the RR owned the ROW in "fee simple". What I gather this means is OWRR&N purchased the land outright with no strings attatched back in 1908 or so. Ajacent lanowners had no more claim to the ROW in the event of abandonment than St. Parks with regard to Rails to Trails or anyone else.

> It depends exactly what the documents say.

> I Am Not A Lawyer, but as I see it in the
> Minnesota case, the landowners are correct:
> the easement says if the RAILROAD is
> abandoned, the property rights revert back
> to the adjacent property owners. It's
> probably a fine point of legal fine print,
> but I believe transfer of a track from one
> corporate entity to another (after all,
> there was a predecessor company to BNSF, and
> BN, and probably its predecessor's
> predecessor as well) is covered, but NOT, as
> an example, the laying of a pipeline or
> power line over same ROW.

> The interesting point in this case is that
> the article expressly states that IN THIS
> CASE an alternate routing of the trail IS
> available through adjacent or nearby
> state-owned lands. Were that every trail in
> such circumstances were so lucky.

> In any case, a point of order: railroad
> transportation fulfills more common good,
> IMO, than snowmobiles roaring up and down a
> winter wonderland. I can understand a NIMBY
> attitude more with the latter than the
> former.


http://www.svry.com
jamesbane@hotmail.com

> In case you missed it in Flimsies, here is a
> challenge to rails-to-trails in Minnesota
> that could open up a can of worms for that
> movement. In this case, the rails are long
> gone, but anyone care to speculate how this
> could affect potential non-common carrier
> museum operations that might be given track
> left in place by a RR?

My WAG after reading the story is that the case hinges on the timing of the abandonment compared to the "sale" to the state and declaration of "Rails to Trails" banking of the right-of-way for "potential future transportation use". As I read the story, the neighbors successfully argued that, since the railroad had ripped up the tracks before "Rails to Trails" status was invoked by the State, by the time the state acted, the right-of-way had legally already reverted to the neighbors (since the reversion occurred the day the tracks were removed, not when the right-of-way was sold) and there was legally no right-of-way left for the railroad to sell to the state and be land banked. If this idea is correct, had the right-of-way been sold and "Rails to Trails" invoked before the track was removed, the conversion would have been "legal".

This certainly is an interesting development, since the entire reason for the rails to trails act is to try to prevent reversion of rights-of-way to adjacent land owners when rail lines are ripped up, snce the railroads seldom own in fee simple.


pjslks@ix.netcom.com