Selling Land Crossed by an Abandoned or Railbanked Rail Corridor
Key Takeaways
- Most 19th-century railroads held only an easement, not fee title — when that easement is truly abandoned under state law, the corridor generally reverts to the adjoining landowner, according to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States
- Railbanking under 16 U.S.C. § 1247(d) blocks that reversion — a corridor accepted for interim trail use "shall not be treated, for purposes of any law or rule of law, as an abandonment of the use of such rights-of-way for railroad purposes," per Cornell Law School LII's text of the National Trails System Act
- A blocked reversion can be a compensable Fifth Amendment taking, but the clock is short — the Federal Circuit held in Caldwell v. United States and reaffirmed in Barclay v. United States that a claim accrues when the Surface Transportation Board issues the Notice of Interim Trail Use, and the Tucker Act gives you only six years from that date to file, per 28 U.S.C. § 2501
Do You Own the Land Under an Abandoned or Railbanked Rail Corridor?
It depends on two things: what the original 19th-century conveyance to the railroad actually granted, and whether the line was formally abandoned or instead "railbanked" for future rail use under federal law. If the railroad held only an easement and the line was truly abandoned, the strip generally reverts to you — but if the corridor was railbanked and converted to a trail, it did not legally abandon, reversion did not occur, and your land is still burdened by a federal trail easement. This is a title question answered by old deeds and a federal agency record, not by what a current map or aerial photo shows. This guide covers that specific case; if your parcel has a different kind of easement, our guide on selling land with an easement covers the general picture, and if your access runs over a private road instead of a rail line, see our guide on selling land with a shared or private road maintenance agreement.
Owners in this situation usually fall into one of three buckets without knowing which: they already own more land than they think, they're still burdened by an old railroad interest that never went away, or they're sitting on a federally protected trail corridor they can't simply absorb into their tract. Sorting out which one applies is a research project, not a guess — and it matters directly to how the parcel sells.
My Land Has an Old Rail Line or Railroad Grade Crossing It — Do I Already Own That Strip?
Possibly, and the answer turns entirely on what the railroad's original conveyance granted back when the line was built. Most 19th- and early-20th-century railroads did not acquire full ownership of their rights-of-way — they acquired an easement, a legal right to use the strip for railroad purposes while the underlying "fee" ownership stayed with (or passed to) the adjoining landowner. The U.S. Supreme Court confirmed exactly this in Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States, holding that the General Railroad Right-of-Way Act of 1875 "had granted an easement and nothing more," and that when a railroad abandons a right-of-way held under that kind of grant, the underlying land "became unburdened of the easement," giving the landowner the same full rights over the former rail corridor as over the rest of the parcel, according to a summary of the decision published by Iowa State University's Center for Agricultural Law and Taxation.
That is why many rural owners already own a strip running the length of their property without realizing it — the moment a railroad easement is legally abandoned, the burden lifts and the corridor merges back into the estate it always technically belonged to. But not every railroad grant was an easement. Some 19th-century deeds conveyed a "limited fee," or even fee simple, to the railroad outright, in which case abandonment does not automatically return anything to the neighbors — the railroad (or its successor) still owns the strip and can sell, lease, or otherwise dispose of it like any other tract. Whether your particular corridor was an easement or a fee grant is not something a current plat, tax map, or satellite photo can tell you. It is set by the language of the original 19th-century instrument — a right-of-way deed, a condemnation record, or a land-grant patent — sitting in the county land records or, for federally granted lines, in Bureau of Land Management or General Land Office records.
What Is Railbanking, and Why Doesn't a Railbanked Corridor Revert to Me?
Railbanking means the corridor was never legally abandoned — Congress built a mechanism into the National Trails System Act that lets a railroad hand an inactive line to a trail sponsor for interim recreational use while preserving it for possible future rail service, and that interim use is defined by statute as not an abandonment. The relevant text, codified at 16 U.S.C. § 1247(d), states that if the interim trail use "is subject to restoration or reconstruction for railroad purposes, such [trail] use shall not be treated, for purposes of any law or rule of law, as an abandonment of the use of such rights-of-way for railroad purposes," according to Cornell Law School LII's text of the statute. Because no legal abandonment occurs, the state-law reversion that would otherwise hand the strip back to the adjoining owner never triggers. The corridor stays intact, now burdened by a federal trail easement instead of a railroad easement.
The Surface Transportation Board (STB) is the federal agency that administers this process. When a railroad seeks to discontinue a line, a prospective trail sponsor can ask the STB to issue a Certificate of Interim Trail Use (CITU) or a Notice of Interim Trail Use (NITU) rather than letting the line go through ordinary abandonment, per 49 CFR § 1152.29 and the STB's own resources. A CITU is issued in a formal abandonment application; a NITU is issued in the more common abandonment-exemption track. Either one pauses the abandonment, opens a negotiating window — an initial one-year term with up to several one-year extensions if both sides agree — during which the railroad and the trail sponsor can reach an interim trail use agreement, according to the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy's own explanation of the process. If they reach a deal, the railroad conveys its interest to the trail sponsor and the corridor is railbanked: preserved on paper for a railroad that may never return, used in the meantime as a public trail, and never returned to the adjoining owners the way an ordinarily abandoned line would be.
Railroad Held Fee vs. Easement-Plus-Abandonment vs. Railbanked — How Do These Compare?
These three situations look identical from the road — an old grade or a paved trail crossing your land — but they produce completely different ownership and title outcomes, and only a documents-and-records check tells you which one you're in.
| Railroad held fee title | Railroad held an easement + true abandonment | Railbanked under the Trails Act | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who owns the strip now | The railroad or its successor/assignee — not you | You (the adjoining/underlying fee owner) | The corridor is preserved; a trail sponsor holds interim rights, no reversion has occurred |
| Does it revert to you | No — nothing to revert; the railroad's ownership was never conditioned on continued rail use | Yes, generally, once abandonment is legally established | No — by statute, interim trail use is not treated as abandonment |
| What encumbers your title | A separate parcel owned by another party runs through/along yours | Potentially nothing once abandonment is confirmed, but the reversion itself may need to be documented | A federal trail easement continues to burden the corridor |
| What a buyer or title company sees | A stranger-owned strip splitting or bordering the tract; a title exception pending clarification | An unresolved question until the original grant and abandonment are documented | A recorded federal interim trail use interest and possibly an active public trail |
| Who to ask | County recorder/register of deeds for the original 1800s conveyance; the railroad's corporate successor | County land records for the original grant; a title examiner to confirm true legal abandonment | The Surface Transportation Board (stb.gov) for CITU/NITU status; the trail-managing agency |
The practical upshot: "the tracks are gone" tells you nothing about which row of this table you're in. Only the original conveyance and the STB's records do.
Can I Get Compensated if Railbanking Blocked My Land From Reverting to Me?
Possibly, but it is a fact-specific legal claim with a short filing window, not an automatic entitlement — you would need a lawyer and a title examination to know whether you have one. The doctrine comes from Preseault v. United States, in which the Federal Circuit held that where the railroad held only an easement for railroad purposes, converting that corridor to a public recreational trail was a taking of a new easement the original grant never covered, and the Fifth Amendment entitles the landowner to just compensation, according to Justia's record of the decision. Because railbanking is what legally prevents the state-law reversion a landowner would otherwise receive, courts have treated that blocked reversion — not the trail itself — as the compensable event. This line of cases runs through the Court of Federal Claims under the Tucker Act, the statute that lets private parties sue the United States for money damages arising from a Fifth Amendment taking.
The catch is timing and facts. The Federal Circuit held in Caldwell v. United States that a rails-to-trails takings claim accrues — and the statute of limitations starts running — on the date the STB issues the NITU, because that is the moment the reversionary interest is legally forestalled, according to Justia's summary of the case; the court reaffirmed that bright-line rule in Barclay v. United States, per FindLaw's case record. Under 28 U.S.C. § 2501, a claim in the Court of Federal Claims is barred unless filed within six years of accrual, according to Cornell Law School LII. That means a claim tied to a NITU issued decades ago is very likely time-barred by now, while a recent one may still be viable — and whether you even have a claim at all depends on the same threshold question as everything else in this guide: what the original grant to the railroad conveyed. This is not something to self-diagnose from a blog post. If you suspect this applies to your parcel, the next step is a real estate attorney and a title examination, not a demand letter.
How Do I Find Out Which Situation Applies to My Parcel?
You determine this with four concrete steps, in roughly this order, not by inspecting the ground. First, pull the original railroad conveyance from the county land records — often a 19th-century deed, right-of-way grant, or condemnation record — and read what it actually granted; "right-of-way" language alone doesn't settle it, since courts have read it both ways depending on the rest of the instrument and the era. Second, check whether the STB issued a CITU or NITU for that specific line; the STB is the federal agency of record for both abandonment and railbanking, and its docket records show whether a corridor was formally abandoned or instead railbanked, per stb.gov. Third, check the county GIS/plat records and, if there is an active trail, contact the trail-managing agency (a state parks department, a rail-trail nonprofit, or a local government) to confirm the corridor's current legal status and any recorded easement. Fourth, get a title examination — a licensed title company or real estate attorney can trace the chain of title, confirm whether an abandonment was legally completed, and tell you definitively whether the strip is yours, still railroad-owned, or railbanked. Our guide on whether you need a survey to sell land covers the related step of pinning down exactly where the corridor sits relative to your boundary lines, which a title search alone won't show you.
Doing these out of order rarely helps. A GIS map won't tell you what an 1890s deed granted, and a deed alone won't tell you whether the STB later railbanked the line. All four pieces working together are what let a title company clear — or properly except — the corridor.
How Does a Rail Corridor Affect Selling My Land?
A corridor of uncertain ownership shows up as a title exception, and buyers and title companies typically respond to that uncertainty by walking away rather than by simply lowering what they're willing to pay. Unlike a routine utility easement that a title company can identify and account for in minutes, an old rail corridor often requires real research — pulling a 19th-century deed, checking STB records, sometimes ordering a survey to locate the strip precisely — before anyone can say who owns what. A retail buyer's lender is unlikely to wait around for that. If the corridor splits the parcel into two pieces, there's an added wrinkle: access. A strip you don't clearly own, running through the middle of your tract, can complicate exactly how you or a future owner get from one side to the other, which is a related but distinct problem from the access questions covered in our guide on selling land with a lien or cloud on title. If the corridor is an active public trail, add a second layer: public foot and bike traffic along or through your land, and the trespass and liability questions that come with strangers regularly present on a strip near — or through — your property.
That said, the same feature that scares off a financed buyer can be a genuine selling point for the right one. A recreational buyer looking for hunting, hiking, or horse-trail access sometimes specifically wants a parcel that borders a rail-trail — direct trail access is an amenity, not just a liability, to that kind of purchaser. The honest framing is that a rail corridor cuts your buyer pool in one direction (conventional, financed, title-sensitive buyers) while potentially opening it in another (recreational buyers who value the trail itself). Which effect dominates depends on the specific corridor, whether ownership is resolved, and how the trail interacts with the rest of the parcel.
What Are Your Options for Selling Land With a Rail Corridor on It?
If your parcel is crossed or bordered by an old rail line, you have three main paths.
Option 1: Resolve the title question first, then list. Pull the original conveyance, check STB records, and get a title examination before you go to market. This gives a retail buyer and their lender the clean answer they're looking for, but it can take real time and sometimes requires a survey to locate the corridor precisely.
Option 2: List and disclose the uncertainty. Put the property on the market, disclose what you know and don't know about the corridor, and let the buyer's due diligence sort out the rest. This works if you're patient, but expect financed and retail buyers to hesitate or ask you to resolve the title question before they'll commit.
Option 3: Sell directly to a cash buyer. A direct cash buyer like Jerez Land can purchase a parcel with a rail corridor of uncertain status in place, as-is. We do the research on the underlying conveyance and the corridor's legal status ourselves, absorb the title uncertainty, the carrying costs, and the resale risk, and present a firm written cash offer on your specific parcel — no waiting on an attorney's opinion letter before you can move.
Request a no-obligation cash offer and we'll review your property and the corridor crossing it together. There are no commissions or listing fees, and we can often move faster than a traditional sale — even when who owns the strip isn't yet settled.
If your parcel also has other title complications, our guides on selling land with a lien or cloud on title and whether you need a survey to sell land cover the adjacent issues that often come up alongside an old rail corridor. For the general picture on easements of any kind, see selling land with an easement, and if your access runs over a private road instead, see selling land with a shared or private road maintenance agreement. For more guides on selling land in less-than-perfect situations, visit our blog.
Frequently Asked Questions
I just found out an old railroad grade crosses the back third of my 40 acres — do I already own that strip of land?
You might, but you need to check the original conveyance to know. If the railroad that built the line held only an easement — the more common arrangement historically — and that easement was legally abandoned, the strip generally reverts to the adjoining landowner, according to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States. If the railroad instead held fee title, or if the corridor was railbanked rather than truly abandoned, it does not automatically become yours. Pull the original 19th-century deed or right-of-way grant from the county land records and check whether the Surface Transportation Board has any record of a CITU or NITU on that line before assuming either way.
A paved rail-trail runs along one edge of my property where the tracks used to be — does that mean the corridor reverted to me?
No, almost certainly not. A rail-trail on a former railroad grade is usually the result of railbanking, a federal process under the National Trails System Act where a corridor is preserved for possible future rail use and used as a trail in the meantime. Under 16 U.S.C. § 1247(d), that interim trail use is legally defined as not an abandonment, so the reversion that would otherwise return the corridor to adjoining landowners never happens. The land under a rail-trail typically remains a distinct, federally protected corridor rather than merging into your parcel, even though the tracks are gone and it looks like open ground.
What's the legal difference between a railroad simply abandoning a line and a corridor being "railbanked"?
Ordinary abandonment is a legal event under state property law: the railroad gives up its interest, and if that interest was an easement, the underlying land reverts to the adjoining owner. Railbanking is a federal alternative created by the National Trails System Act that lets a railroad hand an inactive corridor to a trail sponsor for interim recreational use instead of abandoning it outright. Because federal law states that interim trail use "shall not be treated, for purposes of any law or rule of law, as an abandonment," per 16 U.S.C. § 1247(d), a railbanked corridor never triggers the state-law reversion. The Surface Transportation Board administers this distinction through Certificates or Notices of Interim Trail Use.
My great-grandfather's original deed doesn't say whether the railroad got fee title or an easement back in the 1890s — how do I find out?
You need someone who can read 19th-century conveyancing language in context, because "right-of-way" alone doesn't settle it — courts look at the granting language, the consideration paid, and any reversion or forfeiture clauses in the whole instrument. Start by pulling every recorded document in the chain of title covering that strip from the county recorder or register of deeds, including the original railroad conveyance, any later deeds, and any recorded abandonment. Then get a title examination from a title company or real estate attorney, who can trace the chain and reach a documented conclusion about what was actually granted and whether a legal abandonment occurred. This is a records-and-legal-analysis question, not something a map or a walk of the property line can answer.
I've heard I might be owed compensation because railbanking blocked my land from reverting to me — is that true, and how would I find out?
It's possible but far from automatic, and you would need a lawyer and a title examination to know. The doctrine comes from Preseault v. United States, where the Federal Circuit held that converting a railroad easement to public trail use was a taking beyond the scope of the original easement, entitling the landowner to compensation under the Fifth Amendment via the Tucker Act. But the Federal Circuit has also held, in Caldwell v. United States and Barclay v. United States, that this kind of claim accrues on the date the Surface Transportation Board issued the Notice of Interim Trail Use, and 28 U.S.C. § 2501 gives you only six years from that date to file in the Court of Federal Claims. A claim tied to an old NITU is very likely time-barred; a recent one may not be. Whether you even have a claim depends on what the original grant to the railroad conveyed, which only a title examination and an attorney can determine.
I'm trying to sell land that's split by an old rail corridor of uncertain ownership — will that scare off buyers or title companies?
It can, and the honest answer is that title companies and financed buyers typically respond to that kind of uncertainty by walking away rather than simply discounting for it, because resolving who owns the strip takes real research — old deeds, Surface Transportation Board records, sometimes a survey. A corridor that splits your parcel adds an access question on top of the title question. On the other hand, if the corridor is an active rail-trail, some recreational buyers specifically want land bordering a trail, which can widen your pool in a different direction. A direct cash buyer can purchase the parcel as-is while the title question is still being worked out, absorbing that uncertainty rather than requiring you to resolve it before closing.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or professional advice. Laws and regulations vary by jurisdiction and change over time. Always consult a licensed real estate attorney before making decisions about railroad rights-of-way, railbanking, potential takings claims, or property transactions. Jerez Land is not responsible for actions taken based on this information.