I would like to learn where in the world bike trails have been build adjacent or near a tourist railroad. There are probably many plusses and minuses to learn from reviewing examples where it has been done previously. I am skeptical that it cannot be done, and am not encouraged by apparent examples of competing interests for the right-of-ways that are preserved in urban, suburban and exurban areas.

To start, I am impressed with the example of the Fox River Trolley Museum and the Fox River Bike Trail in South Elgin, IL. Here, much of the bike trail was routed through existing forests adjacent to the railroad, but some track was removed and some encroachments into the railroad easement were necessary to accomplish connectivity. These were compensated and a new track extension was built some years ago with assistance from the agency that built the trail and county parks.

The only disadvantage I saw is that previously, you hardly saw any traces of modern times as you took the train ride through a scenic environment. The ride is still pleasant now, just a little different.

I hope to hear of other places and ways it has been done with some success.

There is a bike/hiking trail that runs along The Western MD scenic railroad and crosses the track several times . You can ride with your bike on the train to frostburg and ride your bike back down to Cumberland.

The one I'm most familiar with is the Western Maryland rail trail that also runs along the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad. I can't find any immediate references, but I recall the trail advocates wanted to get rid of WMSR, too, but were thwarted by the fact that the road is self-supporting. Principle objection to the railroad was having to share a 900-foot tunnel, along with trains being considered "dangerously" close to trail users, and occasional grade crossings from one side of the former double-tracked road to the other side. Since then the real trail users have decided they like an occasional show by a big, snorting 2-8-0, and plenty ride the train one-way to Frostburg and bike back down.

http://www.petitiononline.com/petitions ... es?page=46

http://www.petitiononline.com/petitions ... es?page=47

Strange, that the state of Maryland was all upset about helping to support (not totally pay for track maintenance, just help out with it) a railroad that had paid off all its debts, and bailed out a nearby resort and golf course that had incurred not only its bonded debt, but additional debt equal to the original bonded debt! I keep on telling you, "We don't get no respect, no respect at all," even when we do the right stuff, like clean up corridors in cities and pay our bills!

As it is, the trail boys have a few other problems, or at least, inconveniences:

http://here2play.wordpress.com/category ... ail-trail/

Another trail is a source of controversy in Maryland because of its cost, estimated to be about $1 million per mile, plus the ongoing maintenance expenses, something the trail advocates rarely speak about from the material I've seen.

http://potomacteapartyreport.wordpress. ... ail-trail/

They have inconveniences with trolleys, too:

http://greatergreaterwashington.org/pos ... treetcars/

The Rails-to-Trails group does have what is probably a minority advocacy for Rails-with-Trails:

http://www.railstotrails.org/ourwork/tr ... rails.html

"Currently, there are more than 140 rails-with-trails in the United States, totaling more than 1,400 miles, and more are being built each year."--Rails-to-Trails Conservancy

Longest Rail-with-Trail: 57 miles (Railroad Trail, Mich.)
Shortest: 0.4 miles (Libba Cotton Bikepath, N.C.)
Fastest Train: 150 mph (Southwest Corridor Park Trail, Mass.) [WOW!! Has to be on the Acela line.]
Slowest Train: 5 mph (West Orange Trail, Fla.)
Closest trail to tracks: 2 feet (Railroad Trail, Mich.)
Most trains: 9 per hour (Illinois Prairie Path, Ill.)

http://www.railstotrails.org/resources/ ... -06_lr.pdf

Dispute in California:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELFlt-Y9Ozs

Other things I've found while looking for appropriate material; not all on subject, necessarily, but might be useful for reference.

http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/t ... z2SR9G5fMc

Some people don't like trails because they think a bunch of low-life types will use them to get to their property and cause harm. One wonders what some of these people would think of trains:

http://www.wtva.com/mostpopular/story/R ... 6EMMg.cspx

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=3765

http://www.mcphersonsentinel.com/articl ... /312209947

http://www.rockdalecitizen.com/news/201 ... to-trails/

http://home.earthlink.net/~dick156/

http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/ju ... 320_0f.htm

Sorry about the drift, but maybe there's something useful here.

What about the Durango and Silverton Railroad? I realize here we are talking hiking, biking and that the trails are not directly on the rail path, however when riding the D&S I would say almost half of the passengers on the car I was on were not there to ride the train but rather to take the train to some trails that they depart for mid trip.

Sure they don't have a whole abandoned rail bed to explore but the train is a great way to get the nature adventurers out to their hiking/camp sites. Perhaps this could be a great added business model for some groups. I doubt that mountain biking/hiking trails are nearly as expensive and difficult to construct as entire railroad road beds.

The Oklahoma Railway Museum in Oklahoma City shares several miles of right-of-way with a Bike Trail, locally called the "Katy Trail".

The SMART project is planning to connect from San Rafael to the vicinity of the Larkspur ferry terminal. They rely on NWP Tunnel # i believe 3, which is a double track tunnel. In actual practice, they have scootched one track nearer the centerline for high wide clearance, and the remaining track is a bike path. It is urbanity on both sides of the tunnel so I assume the bike path dashes off onto city streets after that.

The Northern Central Rail Trail in York County, Pa. hasn't seen a train in quite a while, since the last of the Liberty Limited stuff left, but Steam Into History seems set to do something about that. The trail in question connects South York with New Freedom and the Mason-Dixon Line, where the trail continues under Maryland/Baltimore County jurisdiction, minus track, to the north side of Cockeysville, Md.

In Wales, you can ride your bike - or walk - on the Lon Eiffion cycle route from Caernarfon Castle to Dinas, or ride the Welsh Highland one way and your bike the other. 12.5 miles of track & cycle way next to each other - no problem!!!

http://www.walesdirectory.co.uk/Cycle_R ... -12657.htm

I'll give you three more....

1) Cuyahoga Valley (Cleveland - Canton -Akron) is paralleled a good distance within the CVNRA with the towpath bike trail. This is not beside the railroad but on the parallel canalway towpath. What makes this worth looking into is the number of bike ferry riders they haul, along with a subsidy from NPS to haul them to keep cars out of the CVNRA. From a 'number of bikers hauled on the train' basis they are probably the lead.

2) Oil Creek & Titusville: Paralleled by a bike path on the 'second track' within the Oil Creek State Park, which was actually on the other side of the creek on a physically separate ROW. They have some level crossings at points. They do have a small but worthwhile bike ferry service in the service plan.

3) Astoria, OR. This one is really interesting, because they've got a couple miles of track that is on the waterfront and they have a waterfront trail and a trolley on the same surface. Seriously, they planked over the trestles and bridges and both occupy the same bridge, single track, with a 'look out for trolleys' sign. The trolleys go slow enough they could slam to a stop if they had to, but if you want to see evidence that the world doesn't end to do it this way, and to my knowledge nobody has ever been injured, you've got to see it to believe it. The non-bridge portions are a trail right beside the track with no barriers. It's a beautiful situation from a visitor standpoint. There are so many trail users that there may not be that many bikes, but the approach to plank over the bridges and trestles and put both on the same bridge may be unique.

Oh, and I was involved in the WMSR battle. That was back in 2004-5, and was really ugly at the time between the Commissioneers and the railroad. I suggest any readers look at both the Cumberland Trail web page and the WMSR web page and see the level of cross-promotion and support that is going on today. They are fortunate they have a two-track ROW, but much of the trail hysteria and insanity (tunnel issues) has been overcome with common sense on both sides. The bike shops in Cumberland recognize that the train provides a valuable bike ferry service up that hill.

The part that is still toxic in all this is the liability exposure to the rail operator when beside a trail. It hasn't been explored as much as you might think. If the rail operator is under contract on a public corridor, it's more insulated than if it owns the corridor beside a proposed or existing public trail. In those cases, you can expect the railroad/shortline/excursion railroad to do whatever they have to do to prevent from taking a hit on their insurance claims or costs. In many cases, that's where the bigger railroads are doing the 'good fences make good neighbors'.

The California State Railroad Museum's Sacramento Southern Railroad shares its operating right of way with a very well used bike path along the Sacramento River levee.

The Erie-North Judson Trail was put in alongside the old Erie Railroad trackage that is now a part of the Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum. The Trail currently is about 10-1/2 miles long and runs alongside HVRM trackage for about the first mile and a half. Although the museum passenger trains do not normally use this 1-1/2 miles, it is used for special events (Easter Egg hunt; pumpkin patch trains, etc.) and has also been used for car storage, when that has occurred at times in the past.

Les

I have long felt that if the Ohio Canal towpath trail were not extant within the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, that the overwhelming pressure from the rails-to-trails fascists would have forced the abandonment of the CVSR to trail use years ago, since the railroad is owned by the Park Service. As it is, the existence of both railroad and trail complement each other nicely, and they are usually far enough apart from each other that nobody complains about interference from one to the other.

The T J Evans Panhandle Recreational Trail shares ROW with the old PRR panhandle route east of Newark, OH. I believe it is about 10 miles of trail. I shot the "Last" Ohio Central steam excursion from this trail as it headed into Newark. the track is now Genesee and Wyoming's Columbus and Ohio River.

A short section of the Adena Hockhocking Bikeway shares ROW with the Hocking Valley Scenic Railway (former Hocking Valley/C&O trackage) in Nelsonville, OH. Maybe 3/5 mile or so.

Darn, should have remembered a couple more, right in my area. . .

One is the Appalachian Trail, which crosses the Potomac River at Harpers Ferry, W.Va., on a former B&O bridge built around 1892; this bridge, a former double-tracked structure on a realigned main line, became a branch bridge after another realignment in 1931. From 1936 (when a flood destroyed the original Bowman bridge, which had been converted to highway use) until some time in the 1950s, it also doubled as a highway bridge. The fun part was the bridge had a single track on it, as it does now--but had highway lanes on both sides. That meant that half the train moves on this bridge were against automobile traffic. I don't know for certain how they handled this--perhaps by flagging--but I've heard stories of people not expecting to see a steam locomotive coming at them and becoming a bit upset.

The 1931 bridge is the double tracked deck plate girder bridge at the right. The 1892 bridge, with its pedestrian walkway quite visible in this shot, is the black truss bridge to the left. Further to the left are the piers to the original Bowman bridge that was wrecked several times during the Civil War, converted to road use after the 1892 realignment, and destroyed by a flood in 1936:

http://nextgenfmradio.com/2012/08/13/ha ... aten-path/

From Harpers Ferry looking east to Maryland; track going to the left is 1892 main line alignment, now a dead-end spur still used occasionally for storage of MOW equipment. The line going to the right is the former Winchester & Potomac line to Charles Town and Summit Point, W.Va. and Winchester, Va.; from there the line continues on to Strasburg, Va., and an interchange point with a former Southern Railway line. This Southern line was once part of the B&O's effort to reach Roanoke, Va.; SR bought the segment from Strasburg goes on to Harrisonburg, Va. Another railroad--the Chesapeake Western--bought the rest of the B&O between Harrisonburg and Lexington, Va., and promptly abandoned the route south of Staunton. You can still see some of the right of way and at least one or two stone bridges from I-81 between Staunton and Lexington.

http://acm.jhu.edu/~sthurmovik/Railpics ... bridge.jpg

Other photos:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_o0z5fsKcoc0/S ... idge+2.JPG

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_o0z5fsKcoc0/S ... idge+3.JPG

Source of the above two photos:

http://lewspics.blogspot.com/2009_08_01_archive.html

Since others have mentioned canals paralleling railroads, we should also include the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park, which like the B&O and parts of the Western Maryland, runs for 185 miles from Georgetown, Md. to Cumberland. The canal tow path, obviously on its own, river-following right of way, crosses under both the B&O (active) and WM (abandoned) lines at several places, and it also has its own tunnel at Paw Paw.

http://www.nps.gov/choh/index.htm

Check out the passing trains starting at 6:55:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5RDxDfMtTc

Cotton Valley, Wolfboro NH, old B&M branch
http://www.cottonvalley.org/
They 'only' run speeders, so maybe this doesn't count as railroad and recreational shared use. They filled in the gauge in places and put the trail along side in others. They allow hikers, bikers, stroller, horses (!) and speeders to share the track. Nice bike ride, haven't done it any other way. I gather that on the narrow sections where the path is in the gauge, (you can see from one end to the other of each of these sections) the speeders wait for the section to clear.