Railroad ROW issues...

We're surveying around 8 miles of former Erie Railroad bed for a Rail Trail. This line has been officially abandoned for 30ish years now (by Conrail) and was bought by one of the local Cities. The City has deeds and had a survey completed in the 80's. We went out, ran our traverse, didn't find much actual RR evidence from the VAL maps other than some culverts and a post here or there. We did find tons of rebar, pipes, and some monuments (monuments set as part of the 80's survey). We got all the adjoining deeds, got the Val Maps (which have few geometry notations on them), and the City deeds and survey. We also contacted National Archives and confirmed that the valuation maps they have are the same as ours. They do have the BV-107 forms and some bridge/building field notes but we have not ordered those yet. The surveyor who did the original work is long retired to who knows where. His records went to a large national firm (after a few other sales) and we have been unsuccessful in getting field notes, etc from them.

The City deeds, the survey prepared by the city, and the adjoining deeds all match up pretty well with a few exceptions. This also fits relatively well over the evidence found. Here's the dilemma though...all of this evidence only generally resembles the ROW geometry on the Val Maps. The val maps show bump outs where other info does not, they show perpendicular lines when other evidence shows angled lines, they show curves where other evidence info shows lines (not chords from what I can tell), and they sometimes show different widths than other evidence. The ROW based on the deeds/city maps fits well with possession, the val maps do not. We can fit the Val maps within a few feet with what we have and it will cause problems if we hold those. The Val maps also show lots of crossing rights which are not shown on the city maps or city deeds (we will notate those on our survey). I know there are resources to find what was sold off, what was not, etc. but thats time and money the client is not willing to pay. The trail will be on the old bed which is generally right up the middle so the client and the City are not very worried.

I guess the question that comes out is do we want surveyors to be the cause of a lot of problems that would arise if the Val maps are held? Is it really in the public good to come in here and change lines that have been surveyed and held over the last 30 years by a dozen of surveyors and along over a hundred property owners? Seems to me that any adverse possession and/or acquiesced lines would have long since matured. I've pretty much convinced myself that I should hold the more recent mapping through writing this but I'll have to write some serious notes on our mapping.

Thanks for listening...thoughts?