Just a curious question who owns abandoned ROWS?

Depends on the particular facts of that particular case and section of land.
It can be even more complicated if the owner of the land is not the owner of the Right to have a Way across it! The "Right of Way" may be just that, and not include ownership of the land. In some cases, the "Right" may expire if abandoned and not used.

Thanks. Here is Jersey we have quite a bit of abandoned ROWs. Some with track, some without. Always wondered if a business decided it needed rail service and was near or by an abandoned ROW if they could ask for rails to be placed then used.

The State DOT or other branch on occasion aquires the ROW's.

The museum I used to be part of bought 3 of the 13 or so original miles of the branch line ROW it ran on. I don't recall ever hearding from whom it was purchased or who owns the balance of it.

As Jim Boylan said, the issue is never cut-and-dried. It will vary tremendously from place to place.

In many instances in the East, easements were granted where railroads had to pay a certain "ground rent" per year, or the railroad owned the property outright BUT the original owner (or its heirs) would forever retain the right to reclaim the property IF it was not used as a railroad.

Such legal situations have been massive headaches for rail preservationists who have to battle property owners who insist--and they have a very good case, in many instances--that they now own the former right-of-way since the XY&Z Railroad stopped running a decade ago after the flood/whatever. Such battles have gotten downright contentious, in cases like the Ma & Pa group in York County, Pa.

Then some ugly situations arise with instances such as, say, the East Broad Top's situation. If I were an adjacent property owner in Mount Union or Saltillo or Robertsdale, no matter what I may feel about the historic nature of the property, trying to make a case that the railroad has never been technically "abandoned" for service utterly flies in the face of ANY common sense when the railroad there hasn't seen service in fifty years, and you'd be hard pressed to find a tie that hasn't reverted back to compost material. But situations like this--and the occasional resulting "bad blood"--is common throughout the land.

If you want a REAL answer, go to a county assessment office and find out who's paying taxes (if any) on the land in question. I've seen more than one section of right-of-way or station property sold by the sheriff at tax sale for unpaid taxes, only to have them find in the subsequent title search that the county had been billing the wrong company for decades! (One example was a station supposedly "sold" in 2002 when they were still billing the "Penn Central" and not Conrail--or was that NS by then?)

More and more, the trend has been to attempt to preserve a right-of-way as an intact unit, for such things as power line rights-of-way and bicycle trails. In this way, the Rails-to-Trails movement has been our ally--much as we might not want to admit it when they fight restoration of rail service on the line..........

A perfect example is this item in Flimsies a couple days ago:

http://www.lenconnect.com/news/x1016571 ... -existence

In most cases, the right of way belongs to the railroad company or its successors, unless it was acquired by eminent domain condemnation procedures. In such cases, in many states, the heirs to the original owners have the right to reaquire it for the amount originally paid by the railroad. It is often an insurmountable problem finding the heirs after 150 years! Railroads do not wish to retain ownership of abandoned line real estate unless they receive compensation for easements granted to power lines, pipelines, fiber optic lines and the like. They most often offer the land to adjacent owners and/or the highway department. But, it may be decades before everything is sold.

ROW ownership can be a tricky item at best. When I worked for the MBTA in the eighties, we were working towards opening up lines on the south shore. Boy was it ugly. It6 was amazing how many homeowners would just up and take the abandon tracks for their own use. Boy were the suprised when their swimming pools were ripped up to open the lines back up. It took years to work through from what I have seen. The latest line in the group to come online was the greenbush line this past year.

Our museum purchased our 3 mile section of an original trolley right of way. we have deeds to the property. We may still have fights with some of the neighbors who have moved in and said they would never allow us to build. But we own the land and have not allowed anyone to build or use it.

As someone with more than 25 years dealing with railroad rights-of-way, it is amazing how many different versions of title exist. Also, how many people claim to know exactly what railroad has what with regard to title. I know from experience that title can vary from one parcel acquisition to next the adjoining one on a single rail line. I've seen instances where, in 1874, the original rail road company only obtained an easement for the tracks. Then, after the company went bankrupt and was sold to a larger company, the successor went back and acquired the land in fee-simple ownership. The controlling document is the original deed/grant/agreement/easement/whatever...... I've also seen Valuation Maps, with the Parcel Index still intact, claiming different ownership than the recited deed. Some claim to hold land by "adverse".

Right-of-way disputes are common and there appears to a ton of hearsay evidence from "experts". Also, land law varies from state to state. What is common, say in Nevada, would be very different from here in Pennsylvania. Even here in PA, railroad rights-of-way are sometimes different from eastern PA to western PA.

Rob

In some cases the ownership complications can work in favor of preservation… We have a couple of examples here in California…

The Niles Canyon Railway operates on a right of way granted as part of the Pacific Railroad Act of 1864… When SP abandoned the line in 1982 the Fed’s still had some rights to the remains, and as a result it was preserved mostly intact, transferred to the county with aid from Federal funds with restrictions that it be used for transportation (which includes tourist railroad use in this case) One local community wants to claim the right of way through their community for a parking lot or park… but will have to pay market rate for the land, making that use unlikely. While a transit project could replace the museum operation, surviving historic features, now recognized by our state preservation officer make that more difficult.

In another case the former interurban line running past the Museum at Rio Vista Jct. was held as revisionary rights… if the railroad abandoned then the line went back to the property owner or their heirs… In the mean time a pipe line was granted an easement along the line. The railroad line was lightly built, 60lb rail, so as the light 44 and 70 ton locomotives were sold off the railroad had nothing that could safely operate on the now marginal line… The pipe line could not hold the right of way, but a museum operation could, resulting in the eventual sale to the museum, to preserve the pipe line.

I was told that reversionary rights were abolished some years ago in California. But I'm not a lawyer...

Matters regarding property rights and railroad rights of way can be very perplexing and complicated. Rights are generally determined or defined by the railroad's authorizing charter. The charter determines what rights of action the company is authorized by the state to employ in order to build their lines through private lands or properties. Some railroads were authorized to employ eminent domain and some were not. The charter may also address rights of reversion if the lawmakers deemed it necessary. Whether or not the parties have to pay for the land to revert depends on the applicable state law, how title was acquired (if it was acquired) and the railroad's charter-other considerations notwithstanding.

Having researched railroads in the area of Chattanooga, Tennessee I will point out that acquisition of right of way can vary significantly, even within a local region. In the case of the Western and Atlantic Railroad and the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad, the rights granted were reciprocal-determined through interstate compact between the States of Tennessee and Georgia. Those two companies had similar rights to eminent domain that were not extended to other companies operating in the same general area. Other railroads either used eminent domain as authorized by their charters or acquired easements or title to property through contract agreements or gifts.

Furthermore, as previously mentioned some portions of the right of way were obtained as easements or gifts to the companies. Others were either purchased or granted through ED with reversionary rights which still have legal standing, unless the company or its successor is granted title to the property. There is at least one case where portions of the right of way of the old NC&StL were said to have been sold to a private party other than the original or current property owners through whose property the railroad was surveyed.

Advise from a Railway Engineering Education book, which may still be good today:
If you buy additional land outright (that you can't or won't acquire some in other manner) from someone with land already being used, but not completely owned, by the railroad, try to include the original land in the new transaction. This is to get rid of reversions and other problems with the original transaction.
Sometimes it's not the original deed that governs, there might be a newer one with better terms for the railroad.

That does occasionally happen. TVRM actually ran into some issues regarding the right of way back many years ago. When the Southern transferred ownership of the initial right of way to TVRM, there was some issue regarding property on Missionary Ridge located over the old Whiteside Tunnel (currently used by TVRM). I believe that the issue regarded damage to a property which the owners said was from minor subsidence from the tunnel bore or railroad activities. TVRM eventually won that case, although it required some assistance from the Southern's real estate and legal departments.

If I remember correctly, the plaintiffs originally named the Southern as defendants, bringing the TVRM in as defendants once it was realized that the property had been transferred to them. That's something else to consider when inheriting a right of way-any issues that pertain to that property become yours, regardless of whether you created or knew about them.

An interesting situation is developing in Michigan over abandoned rights-of-way. It has large impacts but has attracted little attention.

Most of the railroads in northern Michigan were lightly capitalized, and did not have fee simple title to their land, but were built on easements typically granted "for railroad purposes." After 1976, many of these passed into state ownership for state-subsidized branch lines. Others were abandoned outright then or since. In the 1980's the state enacted a law giving the state Transportation Department the ability to purchase abandoned rights-of-way from the carriers for "rail-banking" and declaring that the theoretical possibility of resumption of rail service was a railroad purpose within the meaning of the 19th-century easements. If no immediate railroad use existed, the state DNR was given the ability to lease the lines for interim trail use. Many hundreds of miles of hiking and snowmobile trails were developed in this manner.

This law went unchallended for about 15 years. But inevitably, a landowner wanted to make use of a parcel bisected by a railroad easement, and put a fence across the DNR trail. Now a case is being heard in a medium-level court in the Upper Peninsula challenging the legality of this scheme. The last cycles of briefs have been filed, and a decision could come soon that could cause the state's system of trails to go poof (if upheld). Operating railroads are unaffected. I suspect that a museum- or tourist-line-owned easement might not be found to be a "railroad purpose," but so far as I know there are no lines in this situation in Michigan.