Rails to Trails

Interesting article in this mornings Greeley (Colorado) paper concerning Rails to Trails conversion of some of the Great Western Railway ROW. The gist of the article concerns disagreements on ownership of a portion of the ROW, ensuing lawsuits, and now the Tucker Act which “put the cost of taking that land from an owner onto Congress and not the railway.” A previous owner of some of the ROW had started a lawsuit over the conversion and the current owner is continuing the suit, with the claim that no one has paid for the ROW. The case has been moved to Federal District Court in Denver.
As a side note, some of this same ROW is on land owned by my wife’s family. My father-in-law claims he was told (as a young man many years ago) by his landlord, who had provided the ROW to Great Western Sugar, that if the Railroad ever stopped operating, the ROW would revert back to the landowner. Unfortunately nothing has been found in writing so far to substantiate that claim.