Read this one today: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/1...onx-daylighting.html
Part of the route they would want to run this brook through what had been part of the old NYC Putnam Branch. What got me thinking was some of the comments, people wondering why the City couldn't take the right of way from the CSX under eminent domain, caused me to do some research, and it is a weird one (and folks, I am not a lawyer, this is just my reading of the items I found),
. There is a body of law around this, and it all apparently depends on how the land was acquired originally. If they bought it outright, then it would be CSX's property as inheritor of the old NYC right of way. But if it were leased or via easement, then it would revert to the original property owner whose land the railroad used. If I read it correctly, if the original use was easement or lease, then the CSX could not claim ownership; often according to another site that was legal advice for rail to trail projects, railroads often assume ownership of right of way because even they don't know the original details of how the land was acquire. If this property in fact was easement or lease, then the city could use eminent domain relatively easily with the real owners (if they didn't want to donate the land or maybe accept a token payment).
If the railroad owns it, unlike some of the comments, the city could take it under eminent domain. Since the property is not in use, hasn't been for 60 years+, CSX would have a hard time meeting the first criteria, that the city taking the property would hurt current operations. The second, that they may want to use it in the future, is a hoot (reconstituting the old Putt would be basically impossible, given the nature of the old route). The third one deals with safety issues, but again, would be very hard to make that case. Again this is just my interpretation of it, if Arnold or one of the other lawyers wants to look at this one, I for one would be interested
Given the size of the property and its lack of real value for anything but this, CSX could probably do itself better by donating it and writing it off on its taxes, but then again.......
It also for me made me look into the building of the railroads and how much was involved in building them, it was a complex mess of state and federal land grants for the right of way, outright buying land (often through shell companies or shill buyers, if the owner knew it was the railroad they would ask a lot more, knowing how right of way is laid out), or in getting easements or leasing from a property owner. I can just imagine what it must be like 150 years later or more trying to untangle who really owns a piece of old right of way. The other interesting thing I never thought of, when the Mohawk and Hudson was built, if they carried freight they had to pay a tax that was commensurate with tolls on the Erie Canal, because the Canal was publicly built they were trying to protect its interests from the railroad, which was built in the late 1820's or so, about 25 years after the Erie Canal opened.
