[HN Gopher] Abandoned railroad routes in North America
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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.
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(page generated 2022-04-14 23:01 UTC)