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You can see why it caught my eye, 110 acres in Freeport should be worth 4x that.
You can see why it caught my eye, 110 acres in Freeport should be worth 4x that.
Land Access Over Railroad?
- Thread starter Piper2022
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dave1949
Super Star Member
I see they do state access across the RR would be necessary, plus the driveway extension. The property taxes @ $1280/yr seem very high for the asking price which should be reasonably close to it's actual market value. Add a house and they would want a bunch. Another battle.
In the long view--which is very important for property--the uncertainty of the RR jacking up the price or conditions is a lot of risk. I noted that Maine is apparently the only state with state laws regarding private RR access, and the lawyers are not in favor of more laws for contracts between private parties. The legislature can pretty much alter or repeal any statute that doesn't require a constitutional amendment. So, not a great amount of future certainty there either.
MossRoad
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Looks like you'd have a couple auto junk yards at your mailbox.
Worked at a factory that had buildings on both sides of the train track.Everything was fine until we needed to tie computers together in all three buildings. Kept legal busy, and engineering for half a year just to shoot a six inch piece of pipe under the tracks. Directional boring was used to every ones approval.
MossRoad
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I used to know a girl in high school that had a private driveway to her parent's house over some RR tracks. And there are lots of farms around here that have the same thing. Only way onto the property. I'm sure its a common thing and the RR could give you a quick answer.
We have a RR grade on the edge of our property. And an old RR bridge. It is now abandoned and the easment has reverted back to the land owners. I think I own the west half of a north/south bridge!!!
We have a RR grade on the edge of our property. And an old RR bridge. It is now abandoned and the easment has reverted back to the land owners. I think I own the west half of a north/south bridge!!!
PoorPlowboy
Platinum Member
There are laws to prevent a right-of-way holder from prohibiting a landowner from using their property in any usual manner or denying them basic human rights. Electrical service, one could argue, is a basic human right in this modern age in any first world country. I would seek the advice of a lawyer if I were your friend.
2LaneCruzer
Super Member
Good advice. Under common law, and in most states, if you have property, it comes with the right of access. You may have to go to court and get a court order for an easement, and you may have to pay for the easement, but you normally cannot be denied access. I'm sure the RR has addressed this issue many times before.
dave1949
Super Star Member
The RR's can be pretty high-handed about this issue. An example is the $10 million liability insurance the RR demanded from crossing ROW lease holders. It's not that a person couldn't eventually force the issue of power or access, but can they afford the years of court battles required to get it and even at that, the ongoing price of access may be high.
My friend has an off-grid solar system and generator, that has worked out okay for him and it was cheaper than lawyers or whatever ridiculous fee the RR wanted for power lines to cross. His road access is not a problem. The crossing was there long before him and is used by several properties. I think the crossing may be used by the stone quarry that abuts his lot.
As another poster noted, it took six months for his company's legal dept. and engineering staff to get an underground data line crossing. A normal resident doesn't have those resources or leverage. A typical community will go to bat for local businesses, and they have ways of applying pressure to RR's because the RR's are almost always in violation of something somewhere. That would be rare to happen for an individual. Just the way it is.
Country Geek
Gold Member
You might want to be sure of that. Those RR easements never seem to go away. I remember in the late 1990s when I was looking for my land I found a nice property with an abandoned RR easement on the survey, between the house and the road . Everyone assured me that it was truly dead and nothing to worry about as the railroad would never use it again. I passed on the property for a few reasons, one of them being that IMO if it was really irrelevant it wouldn't have been on the survey. And yep, sure enough they were right that the railroad had no interest in ever using it again, but instead it became part of a local rails-to-trails network. I use the trail myself and the current owners of that house have little privacy because the trail is a bit higher in elevation than the house, one of the major access parking lots is their next door neighbor, and they had to build a gate to keep the trail users off their driveway (which crosses the trail).
