Are Railroad exempt from Acquiescence and Adverse Possession??ÿ I know the government isn't, but Railroads aren't a Government entity.
Good question.?ÿ I would bet they are, but that's just a guess.
IANAL, but a quick look via Google seems to indicate it depends on how the railroad acquired the land.?ÿ A government grant may make it immune, whereas land acquired by purchase may not be immune. Abandoned railroad land is not immune.?ÿ
I think that's what I see, but wouldn't bet that holds in all states. See for instance:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3474435
and
https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?&article=2348&context=articles
It depends on how the railroad property was acquired.?ÿ Lands purchased by the RR from private entities are subject to all manner of legal acquisition.
Here's a good 1996 case from the Nebraska Supreme Court:
As already answered they are are not exempt just because they are a RR, whether it applies depends...both on how the ROW was acquired and what RR we are talking about (some are government entities) and other stuff...(is it an active track, who acquiesced on behalf of the railroad, the words in the grant document...)
Well it's a totally abandoned railroad. No tails, no ties just a HP where it once was. There's a ROW Plat through the private land that a it's the Forest Service. The ROW is currently owned by the State of Montana who leases it to the Landowner for $10. The remainder of the ROW has dissolved into private ownership. The railroad served to haul ore from mines in two Districts. That leads me to believe it wasn't a Grant.
It is a safe bet that the portions being leased by the State are not subject to unwritten transfers. What is the status of the portion you are dealing with??ÿ
Be careful and don't rely on advise here. I knew a surveyor who got in trouble by not showing a narrow gauge railway that had been abandoned for 100 years by a private railroad. All kinds of houses and other improments were but right on top of it. He assumed some sort of unwritten transfer had occurred, but in working on a neighboring parcel I came up with a deed to a railroad that was a pseudo state agency...
Anything involving a railroad is a PITA.?ÿ In one case, I very carefully read the wording in the record describing the centerline of the railroad as it passed from one side of the section to the other.?ÿ The location of the rails was off by something like 300 feet on one side of the section and maybe 150 feet on the other.?ÿ It appears the description was written prior to the construction and the construction ignored the written words entirely.
I retraced the railroad's ROW description and it matches the old railroad bed pretty well. The railroad company is out of the picture.
All that is special for railroad is they are interstate commerce, so they are largely exempt from zoning or local permitting. They can do whatever they want with their land.
Heck, I'm afraid to even cross a railroad here.
Adjacent Property Owners | North Carolina Railroad (ncrr.com)
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Unless you consider how deeply the the east coast elite had their futures intertwined with the railroad, it is hard to imagine a free people giving an entity so much power, until you consider also that the Western states didn't revolt over it...the ability to move goods is so important that the cost is apparently worthwhile.
Query, would a state or other locality have more jurisdictional control over an interstate river running through its boundaries than it does over a railroad?
(I don't have to get a right of entry to locate OHW, at least.)
Undoubtedly railroads have served us well and still do. The NC Railroad Corporation owns the tracks here and began a major and ruthless right of way enforcement campaign maybe a decade ago. There were certainly encroachments of all kinds, including permanent buildings, into the ROW, many dating back decades. Many likely were not innocent mistakes, many others were, some with documentation. The link (on the page linked to above) to a POB article of the time shows some of the survey work.
I had no pony in the race nor any objections to the process, but it was a lesson in power. One problematic group was owners who had purchased property with the encroachments already in place and with surveys that disagreed with the RR Corp's assessment. I lost track when the newspapers lost interest, so I'm not sure how everything worked out.
in any event, we just have to be very, very careful around railroads, whether we want to cross them or buy property near them. One of my old hunting buddies back in the day, a grizzled old deputy sheriff, always stopped at RR crossings whether the lights were flashing or not. I asked him about that one day.
His reply was, "Electricity fails, but steam don't never fail."
It's just best to not mess with them.
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