[OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails

[Bryce Nesbitt]

On Fri, Aug 28, 2015 at 9:32 PM, Russ Nelson <nelson at crynwr.com> wrote:
>
> Speaking of housing developments, I earlier pointed to the south end
> of Cazenovia, where a housing development has an obvious railbed to
> the north, and an obvious railbed to the south, and in people's
> backyards, a treeline where the railbed was.
>
> Should the map look like this (A)?  ___   __ ____
>
> Or should it look like this (B)?    ___---__-____
>
> Some people are arguing for A. I argue that B is a better
> representation of what is there (the underscores) because it includes
> the dismantled portions (the dashes).
>

I've worked on "rails to trails" projects where the physical trace of the
railbed was
subsumed by fences, lines of trees and (in once case) a swimming pool.

But the legal right of way still existed.  Those homeowners were using
property they did
not own tax free: encroaching.  Once the encroachments were cleared, the
railroad
was turned into a trail (connecting A to B).

Thus something existed of the railway even through the backyards:
the legal right of way, the arsenic and lead, and ultimately
the desire to reconnect the bits.
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