I remember reading about the situation with the High Line in NYC and the rules around railroad lines and abandonment and so forth. With a rails to trails it depends on the agreement between the railroad and those who build the park, with the high line the property actually was transferred over to the NYC department of parks I believe by CSX, they no longer own the right of way. In other cases the railroads allow the rail to trail conversion and the sponsoring agency is in charge of the trail, but the property is still owned by the railroad and they can retain the right to 'claw back' the trail if they ever decide to re-activate the line (for example, I think they did that with the route that was supposed to become the so called Lackawanna cutoff, I believe that they took back rights to what had been a rail to trail including the Paulinskill viaduct (and I could be wrong, they may have talked about doing that but didn't). I remember reading about the process where a railroad makes a rail line having suspended operations versus formal abandonment, the latter is a big deal.
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