[HN Gopher] Abandoned railroad routes in North America ___________________________________________________________________ Abandoned railroad routes in North America Author : protomyth Score : 121 points Date : 2022-04-13 17:01 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.abandonedrails.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.abandonedrails.com) | pandesal wrote: | Not going to lie, before I visited the site, I was hoping it was | a hot take article about why Ruby on Rails now suck and people | should stop using it and migrate off of it. I was ready for the | comment section. | Trasmatta wrote: | I already had all my Rails hot takes half composed in my mind | before I even finished clicking. What should I do with all this | energy now? | protomyth wrote: | Sorry. I was submitting it to see if anyone would suggest a way | to buy the abandoned tracks to start a commuter service since | HN has had so many cargo vs person rail stories lately. | | Ruby would have been a bit too hot a submission for me. | bombcar wrote: | Railroads are usually loathe to give up right-of-way even if | it has been abandoned, but it can be done with enough support | and money. | | Many rail trails are still owned by the railroad with an | option to make them rail lines again if they want. | ghaff wrote: | Yes, where I live in the greater Boston area, you've seen a | few commuter rail extensions that I assume made use of | existing railroad right of ways that were abandoned (ADDED: | As in no longer used for rail service) at some point once | the rail service became commuter rail service | Lobstrosity2022 wrote: | PostQuadlude wrote: | > Abandoned railroad routes in North America. | | And yet the website only shows less than one third of North | America. It's amazing to me how narcissistic/bad at geography | Americans are. | | (something something, Americans can only find themselves on a | globe because it says "US") | paparush wrote: | this is a really nice asset! | Svip wrote: | My favourite part about https://www.openrailwaymap.org/ is that | it shows abandoned and razed tracks, although you have to zoom in | somewhat. I wonder if there is a way to make it highlight those | tracks at a higher zoom level. | exabrial wrote: | I've really started to enjoy biking "rail to trail" lines in | Kansas. The Flint Hills Trail is 115 miles of biking, relatively | no elevation change... but the best part is absolutely 0 | motorized vehicle traffic, making it quite enjoyable. | | If you ever get a chance to bike it I would, and consider making | a donation to the foundation that builds these out. | codyb wrote: | They've done that from NYC to Albany and it's great. As you | say, no traffic. I can't think of a much safer way to bike. | gen220 wrote: | I'm not sure I'd characterize that particular trail as "no | traffic" [1]. Large segments of the route you describe are | along country roads where you share the road with cars and | trucks traveling at 55mph. As much as I wish it weren't so! | That'd be so much fun. :) | | Perhaps you're thinking of the Erie canal trail (Buffalo to | Albany), which is composed of a much higher proportion of | bike trails? | | [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/11/05/nyregion/ | ny-e... | Melatonic wrote: | Mountain Bike needed I assume? Or is it more like a dirt single | track? | snarf21 wrote: | We need to do this write large. All abandoned lines should be | seized by eminent domain and turned into trails. | gehwartzen wrote: | One of the rails to trails routes here in Virginia that I've | ridden my bike on features a pretty large and relatively high | bridge that spans acroases a river and much of the woods | surrounding it. The more narrow bridge makes it easier to see | over both sides like a typical pedestrian bridge but having | that experience in the middle of the woods and above the trees | was rather magical. | | Here is a picture of in | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Bridge_(Appomattox_River)... | colincooke wrote: | Another good one is the American Tobacco Trail in Durham, NC | [0]. A fantastic biking trail in an otherwise car-centric area. | | [0] https://www.abandonedrails.com/durham-to-duncan | tshaddox wrote: | If you're relatively close and interested in a long rail | trails, I'd recommend checking out the Katy Trail next door in | Missouri. It's the longest rail trail in the US. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katy_Trail_State_Park | dboreham wrote: | Saw the posting and wondered if the site listed any of the many | abandoned lines I see here in Montana. Turns out it does: | https://www.abandonedrails.com/montana I'm particularly | fascinated with the Homestake Pass line, which is easily visible | from the adjacent I-90 freeway -- you can see the rails are still | in place. Apparently it was never actually closed, they just | never ran another train after some date in the 1980s. | Subsequently there have been some tunnel collapses that make the | line unusable. | bitwize wrote: | There was an abandoned railway near my house when I was growing | up. I used to go for nature walks there and see wildflowers, | hummingbirds, butterflies, etc. | VLM wrote: | One interesting technology aspect not mentioned so far, is my | local rail-to-trail conversion is funded partially by selling | (renting, whatever) buried fiber right-of-way. Its nicely paved | for rollerbladers and the ditches are kept clean and gates are | locked and I used to work for a telco so I can recognize they | have absolutely HUGE amounts of fiber running along the corridor. | They have to maintain it just to permit fiber service vehicles in | case of an outage, so why not let the state DNR "double dip" and | sell annual trail passes for $10 to around 20K people per year. | They run enough profit to slowly expand and improve the | facilities. | | And it drifts slightly off topic but I also ride my bike on a | "rail-to-power+trail" conversion where they ripped out the rails | and installed large HV towers, along with the usual fiber and a | DNR-maintained bike trail. | | One nice thing a funded trail can have, is clean bathrooms at | trailhead buildings, nicely paved and maintained parking lots, | short connecting segments to nearby parks, etc. Obviously I live | in the burbs far from violent homeless to enjoy this kind of red- | state privilege. Out here parks are for moms and toddlers, not | heroin purchase and shootings. | smm11 wrote: | Winter much? You had a valuable post, too bad you had to maghat | it. | | Here's my plug for a nice rails-trail, even in a "Red" state: | https://bikecowboytrail.com/ | BashiBazouk wrote: | They have Felton to the Boardwalk run in Santa Cruz county as | abandoned but Roaring camp bought it and runs tourist trains on | that route. Weekends all year and everyday during the summer... | | Edit: Searched the site and found it. Looks like the Felton to | Campbell is the abandoned part. Not that you would know it from | their main map... | nradov wrote: | It appears that rail service might get shut down if they can't | reach an agreement with the local government on route | maintenance costs. | | https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/popular-roaring-camp-r... | binarynate wrote: | Very interesting site, although not all the rail routes listed | are actually abandoned per se. For example, I live next to a | popular and well-maintained trail that used to be a railway, and | the site still lists it as an abandoned rail line. | moenzuel wrote: | I noticed the same for my local area. The site listed an | abandoned rail that has long since been turned into a popular | paved bike path. The pictures for the rail even show the bike | path instead of rail. | [deleted] | saltminer wrote: | Rail trails weren't created just by being left to rot, they had | to be legally abandoned by the railroad before they could be | converted into trails (in the US, anyway). | peckrob wrote: | One of the reasons rail trails are fairly popular is because | it preserves the railroad right-of-way for potential future | use. Even if the rails are removed and pavement put down, | it's far cheaper to pull the pavement up and re-lay rails if | you need the line in future (like for light-rail or commuter | service) rather than to have to re-acquire the right of way | again or build an entirely new line. The term is | "railbanking." [0] | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railbanking | munk-a wrote: | The large Vermont line this site returns was a causeway across | lake champlain which is an active enough bike path that there | is a seasonal ferry service for the portion of the line that | used to be a bridge. Whether there are tracks there or not | these still leave visible scars across neighborhoods. | chrisseaton wrote: | > For example, I live next to a popular and well-maintained | trail that used to be a railway, and the site still lists it as | an abandoned rail line. | | Eh? What do you think an 'abandoned rail line' is? It's exactly | this. | asdff wrote: | Abandoned for rail use though. If you are hiking somewhere like | the allegeny national forest, these abandoned rail routes are a | boon since they are generally raised up out of mucky ground, | flat, and easy to navigate along if you know which one you are | on. Hunters frequently just walk along the abandoned railways | when searching for game. Why not call it a trail at that point? | IMO because this isn't built like a trail (which can have | complicated terrain or scrambles up or down some steep | terrain), its built like a railway, and should be marked as | such on a map since that will tell you a lot about the | conditions on that route (raised, flat, generally free of | obstructions short of fallen trees since abandonment) | hammock wrote: | We call them "rail trails" | ghaff wrote: | Usually rail trails are deliberately constructed and | maintained however. Although the degree to which this is | done varies. And it's also not uncommon for some section of | a rail trail to have been worked on and other sections are | in the plans for someday--whether because of money or local | opposition. | | ADDED: And as noted elsewhere the railroad or its | successors in ownership often still own the right-of-way-- | however unlikely it would be to revert a popular rail trail | to rail use. | nereye wrote: | For more info, see https://www.railstotrails.org/. | | Notable examples in Seattle include the Burke-Gilman trail, | the Sammamish River trail, and close by the Snoqualmie | River trail, etc. | hammock wrote: | The Virginia Capital trail is a good one at 52mi long. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Capital_Trail | spookthesunset wrote: | That site badly needs a map of all the trails they | support. If there is one, I can't find it... | rrsmtz wrote: | Why not just say U.S. instead of North America? | chrisbrandow wrote: | this is so great | Melatonic wrote: | All of the abandoned subway stations and tunnels in downtown Los | Angeles are pretty damn cool too! | xyzzy21 wrote: | There's definitely a whole lot more than listed - easily 10x. | | The half dozen I know about in each CA and NY aren't listed at | all. | mjg59 wrote: | https://www.railmaponline.com/USWestMap.php only covers the | western US, but has more detailed mapping in most cases. | WalterBright wrote: | Seattle has abandoned railways that could be re-used for light | rail at minimal cost (they actually sit there with rusting tracks | on them). Instead, every effort has been made to destroy those | corridors, so that tens of billions of dollars can be blown by | blasting new corridors for light rail. | | https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6122286,-122.1837204,121m/da... | andbberger wrote: | funny example, bellevue is the atherton of seattle. they caused | such a stink during planning of the line 2 extension microsoft, | boeing and t-mobile sent the city council a letter telling them | to shut the hell up | lostmsu wrote: | I live in Bellevue, but did not track that saga here. Can you | link a news article or a discussion that could be made sense | of? | Manuel_D wrote: | The condensed story is that Bellevue city council wanted | the rail line to more closely follow I-405 and I-90. | WalterBright wrote: | The rail corridor parallels I-405. In fact, it crosses | over it and under it. What more could they want? | WalterBright wrote: | I could never get the Seattle Times to ask questions about | why the Eastside Rail Corridor, running from Renton to | Bothell along I405, could not be used. Their journalism | about it looked like press releases from the government. | | Though I have gotten hate mail calling me an uninformed | idiot to imagine that railroad tracks paralleling the most | congested freeway in the state could be used for light | rail. No, it must be destroyed. | | This isn't the only track the county has destroyed. There's | the line from Renton to Black Diamond that was used to | stuff a mattress, and one paralleling Bothell Way that was | used as a beehive. | andbberger wrote: | the wiki page is excellent, and clearly written by someone | who was tired of all the bullshit | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_2_(Sound_Transit) | golem14 wrote: | Seems rather tame compared to Palo Alto's response to | BART/Caltrain changes ... :) | andbberger wrote: | greatest NIMBYs in the world. richard mlynarik's latest | grade separation crayons leave palo alto and atherton | untouched, which I find hillarious | hashmash wrote: | Most of the old railways on the Eastside aren't suitable for | new development because they're surrounded by low density | suburbs. Any stations built along a new line would have very | little traffic, making the whole system kind of pointless, | unless it was designed as a high speed system. But doing that | wouldn't be able to use the existing lines anyhow because they | have too many curves. | WalterBright wrote: | All I can say is, nice try. I live here. It parallels I405 | which moves at a walking pace for most of the day. All those | people are going somewhere - and Kirkland, Bellevue, Renton | are all major destinations. Have you looked at the skyline of | Bellevue lately? The corridor goes right by it. Around the | north and south ends of Lake Washington it could connect to | the rest of the light rail, making a complete circuit around | the Lake which divides the metropolitan area in half. | | Really, what could be more _useful_? I 'd use it all the | time. Sure, it wouldn't go by my house, but I'd drive to the | station and take it for the major part of my trip. | | It doesn't have to be high speed. It just has to be faster | than the gridlocked I405 with a predictable schedule. I | always have to leave an extra hour early to drive to the | airport because I might get stuck on I405 for an hour. | sillyquiet wrote: | It has the rail line that was my childhood companion - it ran | maybe 3 miles from my home | https://www.abandonedrails.com/nacogdoches-to-loeb | | It engendered lots of 'ghost train' campfire stories. And they | installed a lot of infrastructure to support it, including | highway overpasses and crossings - there are still a couple now- | purposeless overpasses on Highway 69 that once crossed it. | supernova87a wrote: | One thing that always catches my eye is seeing from satellite | views the oddly shaped ghosts and footprints of long-gone | railroad tracks and byways, which for decades after (if not a | century), leave their mark on a city's streets and blocks. And | then happening to walk by it in person on the ground. Like for | example, | https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7545858,-122.4138878,311m/da... , | or | https://www.google.com/maps/@37.404972,-122.137255,913m/data... | | You can see this in SF Mission and the old Southern Pacific | lines, and why some blocks are so oddly shaped, and why there are | parks that have the strangest configurations. Out of place | diagonal lots, parks, roads. Very hard to erase those legacy | shapes. | | Similarly, seeing long stretches of green or empty space and | realizing that there's a giant water pipe underneath stretching | from the Sierras, and that's why there will never be a house | built on that <xyz> lot. | | (Funny, and I never seem to find among my friends anyone else who | takes interest in it.) | EvanAnderson wrote: | I find this fascinating, too. I'm in western Ohio near an | abandoned line that connected Indianapolis, IN to Springfield, | OH. The line is still very apparent in satellite photos nearly | 50 years after the last bits were retired. Likewise, in the | property records, the "scar" the line left on the land is | clearly visible. | | In a few places landowners purchased the parcels on both sides | of the line and "reconnected" them, but mostly the line's | legacy is a bunch of oddly-shaped property lines cutting across | a grid of 80 or 160 acre fields. In those "reconnected" places | it's interesting to see how the crops and soil have a slightly | different appearance (or not-so-slight, in some cases). | | Many of the little towns along the line have a "Railroad | Street", too. The town I grew up in did, but I'm old enough to | remember when the abandoned rails were still there. | | Similar to the railroads leaving their mark, a few years ago I | got a bit obsessed with the Hetch Hetchy aqueduct. I spent a | few evenings laying in bed "flying" the line with Google Earth, | seeing where the pipes diverge and following their separate | paths, and seeing where they meet up again. Seeing how San Jose | and Palo Alto are situated on top of the line is interesting. | I'm resolved to visit the Pulgas Water Temple and any public | spaces I can walk on top of Hetch Hetchy next time I'm in the | Bay area. | addaon wrote: | The Pulgas Water Temple is such a strange, strange place. It | feels so out-of-place. I tend to stop by during my annual-ish | Filoli visit. | asveikau wrote: | There's tons of spots like this just east of the mission, | downhill from Potrero.. lots of oddly shaped buildings and | parking lots too. | | Near San Bruno Ave near division you can still see railroad | tracks on some of the streets, partially covered by street | asphalt. | farnsworth wrote: | These marks are all over Seattle too. Anywhere you see a weird | diagonal street, a 5-way intersection, etc, is probably the | ghost of a rail line. | | It's sad to me that we lost so much to turn cities into a grid | of highways. | 13of40 wrote: | I was out for a walk in Kirkland (across the lake from | Seattle) the other week and found a little paved path that | ran about 1/4 mile through a wooded area. I could tell by the | amount of engineering they would have had to do to raise the | grade that it wasn't just some 50s foot path. So when I got | home, I looked at the King County Parcel Viewer (Google it if | you live around here, it's worth it) with the 1936 aerial | photo basemap...and couldn't find it. Some more digging | revealed that it was a railroad built in the late 19th | century to service the Great Western Iron and Steel Company, | which was partially built but never finished. So even to all | the people looking up and pointing at that airplane in 1936, | the railroad was still something only their grandparents | would have seen being built. | betwixthewires wrote: | I remember I used to go to this old railroad bridge and hang out | and fish, there were signs of life there, bb gun marks on the | metal, graffiti, beer bottles. I wasn't the only one spending | time in this space. | | It made me think about how we think of infrastructure as animals. | When we think of a road, we think of it in much the same way we | think of a forest or a river. It's just there, a permanent part | of the landscape. But these things must be maintained, and all of | it will be ruins one day. Every single thing we have built will | lose it's purpose, and eventually it's form. And in much the same | way you see things like wasps and pigeons moving into unused | structures, humans will do the same in our own human way. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | It's missing the Marysvale Branch in Utah. | andbberger wrote: | we do a terrible job of corridor preservation in the states. lots | of converting old rail right of ways to trails or redeveloping | them. the utility of simply leaving them empty, especially in | urban areas, is hard to overstate. | | probably the example in the bay is the dumbarton line, which has | been preserved and in a world where CAHSR wasn't politically | compromised would be the route off of the caltrain towards the | altamont pass. the altamont alignment is technically superior to | the chosen pacheco alignment on all metrics (cost, speed, | operational constraints), but pacheco was chosen due to lobbying | by san jose politicians, who, suffering from a massive | inferiority complex, demanded that podunk san jose's diridon | intergalactic was on the main line and not served by a branch. | that decision, btw, pretty much single-handedly compromises the | utility of CAHSR. it severely constraints the tph into SF, makes | the SF-sacramento trip uncompetitive, and adds billions in | unnecessary infrastructure costs | | another example is the vasona branch, which branches off the | caltrain right of way around cal ave, and slated to be used for a | BART line to los gatos during the early days of BARTs | development. | einpoklum wrote: | So, when is the US going to finally wisen up and switch back from | automobile-focused to railway-focused transit? :-( | munk-a wrote: | As soon as car ownership stops being culturally associated with | maturity and freedom - and that's probably never going to | happen. | pessimizer wrote: | So as soon as there's no money to be made in manufacturing | cars. | betwixthewires wrote: | Never, we have airplanes. | bachmeier wrote: | Incomplete. Source: I own part of an abandoned rail route not | listed. | brimble wrote: | Can confirm. My family used to own a chunk of land that had | part of an abandoned rail line on it (the rail and ties | themselves were gone, but the path was _very_ obvious) and the | map shows some near it, but not that one. | EvanAnderson wrote: | Same here. Dad bought the parcels on both sides of the rail | line and "reconnected" it back into a single parcel back in | the 90s. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-14 23:01 UTC)