The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has realized the importance of maintaining unused and low use age railway corridors, and actively purchases the land and rails when lines become unprofitable for railroads to own.  

The Executive Office of Transportation (EOT) is responsible for preservation and maintenance of these lines. 

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21st CENTURY UPDATE

It was in 2009 when Gov Deval Patrick redid the transportation secretariat to be a formal Dept of Transportation and did away w the “EOT”.  When I served on his Transition Team for Transportation issues before his inauguration, we made this one of his priorities. It has now been 11 years since the term EOT was discontinued.
 

Where possible to maintain rail service to customers on the line the EOT leases operating rights to local class 3 railroads. The EOT generally does not consider rail to trail conversion an acceptable use of the rail corridor, and prefers to maintain the option for resuming rail operations on land they control.   

 

21 CENTURY UPDATE

Egregiously wrong. This was the 20th century thinking. This isn’t the case anymore.  DOT owns a few RRs that don’t make sense for a genuine RR company to operate. They then lease them to others who think they’ll be able to operate them, if fitted out with the proper support structure and crutches provided by the state.  It is evitable that they will become trails. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it is evitable. Sometimes that transition takes a generation, but it is inevitable. I’ll explain this in detail deeper in.  But let me add in at the moment that the EOT owned corridor from Concord/Acton to Sudbury is becoming a trail. When it was a RR, owned by the state, but saw PC, Conrail and CSX trains on the line, I could transload cheaper and more timely, 100 miles to the west than the class one RRs could locally.  More on this genre of a topic later.

A watershed moment took place in mid 2014 when  NY Gov Cuomo was given a report published  by Parks, Trails, NY  that showed that the linear park known as the Erie Canal Trail was producing $253 million a year in revenue for the state and the communities along the way.  LINK HERE to the report. At the time of the report, the trail was only 78% complete and yet it was producing these numbers.     It caused a few notable actions.

In Massachusetts, Governor Charlie Baker was sworn-in a few months later, in January 2015.  When putting together his key inner-core staffers, he chose as his director of strategic planning, someone who knew what was very, very special about Massachusetts. Something that was going to be very important for the future.

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The number and density of dead, steam RR corridors in the state was simply unmatched anywhere else in the U.S. And they didn’t just lead to played-out, extraction industries where no one lived.  Here, this inventory leads to where the wealth was created.  The old industrial centers where huge antediluvian mill complexes employed thousand of people. Today those mills are closed, but repurposed for apartments, condos, start-up small businesses etc. The dead railroads leading to them have been dormant for two to three generations. Today, they are being rediscovered and repurposed as linear parks.  It is largest recycling project underway in the US today.

Back in NY, in January, 2017, in his inaugural address, because of the PTNY report, Gov Cuomo commanded NY DOT to build another 400 miles in his next 4 year term. He wanted an iconic project to be completed on his watch. The iconic project is called the Empire State Trail. At 750 miles, it will be longest in-state trail network in the U.S.  It is on-track to be completed at the end of this year. LINK HERE to the state website about the Empire State Trail.

In Massachusetts, once he was shown what the potential network here would look like, Gov Baker has commanded four agencies within the state guv’mint, DOT-(not EOT which has been gone for almost 12 years), DCR—the parks agency, and the Executive office of Environmental Affairs –which has two agencies involved in the permitting of big projects—to meet together w top and mid level staff, every two weeks, in the Governor’s suite of offices inside the state house.  Their job is to take-down internal barriers or silos and to work to expedite the development of this network. 

 

I’ve been doing this work for over 20 years and I’ve never seen such concerted change. A top-down driven change. Change at all levels.   

Here's some notable things that have happened in Mass in the past 10 years.

• The Recreational Use Statutes in Mass (and Maine too btw) have been changed to call out both RRs and utilities as owners of land that might be useful for rec use.  As such these owners have been called out to be immune to lawsuits. {the utilities in Mass own more miles of dead RR than private RR companies do.]

• The DOT [not EOT] in Mass has flipped on the idea of rail-w-trail.  From a 20th century mindset of: Unless you can prove it safe, we can’t allow these.  To now, a 21st century mindset of: Unless you can prove them to be unsafe, we will allow them.

•  The 2nd largest landowner in Mass is the MBTA, the transit agency in the Boston area.  Much of what they own is dead RR corridor.  In fact after the court case on Cape Cod –see below-- which ruled that governmental agencies could reassemble former RR corridor for public purposes, the MTBA bought both live and dead corridor from the B&M RR in over 50 communities—and cleaned out any ‘cloudy title’ by running them through the eminent domain washing machine so to speak. This was about a year or two after the court ruling you’ll see below.

• About 8 years ago, the privatized RE department of the MBTA decided to make available for a nominal fee [about $0] the dead steam RR corridor in any of the scores of places that have had them sitting there as wastelands for two-three generations.

• And now we have Gov Baker and the Trails Team internal to the Gov’s office.

 

Now let me tell you all about the history of this stuff in Mass.  I’m gonna curl your hair. We are going back to the late 60s when the bottom-dweller Penn Central aka The Failed Attempt To Merge Oil-And Water decided to abandon the Woods Hole Branch on Cape Cod.

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That was when a couple of older women who lived near to the RR corridor decided to start looking into making it into a bike and hike trail. They found support at the town level, but this was so long ago there were no resources on how to do this.  There was support in town for this conversion, but some adjoining land owners were alarmed at the prospect of people walking or biking past their ocean front houses.

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One of those folks was a doctor with resources who approached the RR to buy the land near to his house. Penn Central of course sold it to him.  This set the stage for one of the most momentous events that you’ve never heard of.  AND the creation of two obscure laws that you’ve probably never heard of either.

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The town eventually, at town meeting voted to purchase the line from the PC—minus of course, the section bought by the doctor. He of course rebuffed every attempt by the town to purchase the section he owned.  The town eventually voted to use Eminent Domain to the buy that section. The doctor fought it every step of the way. All the way to the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) of Massachusetts. Their decision was notable.  They ruled that the town could use the Eminent Domain tool to purchase the corridor for the purpose of creating a publically accessible bike and hike trail.  First time in the history of the US that a SJC ruled on that question.  But wait, it gets better. . .

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The local State Representative in the Mass State House, Dick Kendall was so alarmed that the state had no role whatsoever in the question of: DOES THE OWNING RR HAVE THE RIGHT TO SELL  CORRIDOR TO WHOEVER MIGHT STEP UP TO BUY IT?   Rep Kendall then proposed and got passed, two laws. One, the 161C gives the state the right of first refusal on the sale of any RR land being sold by the RR to a citizen.  And 40-54A which requires a local building commissioner to not give a building permit to construct a building next to or top of former RR corridor without there being a hearing at DOT HQ in Boston. 

A great story about the effort to the trail built in Falmouth/Woods Hole is HERE.  You’ll see that one of the women involved here was Barbara Burwell, mother of David Burwell who later co-founded Rails-to-Trails Conservancy based on his mother’s discovery that there was no national clearinghouse of info on how to convert dead RRs into usable things.

A short video interview with the now elderly Dick Kendall, who authored the two important laws.

Here’s a link to DOT’s website about the two programs.  You’ll see the queue of properties currently for sale or a bit about a construction project that likely would prevent a RR from coming back.  Very obscure section of the DOT website for sure.

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The 161C program is pretty interesting. It govern’s the sale of former RR corridor. The railroad can’t consummate a transaction w/o the state greenlighting the sale. When the RR notifies the state that a sale is pending, the state will canvass the municipality, the regional planning agency, and other state agencies. Do they have an interest in the sale of this corridor?  If so, how will you pay for it? (And of course, geeks like me might weigh-in on things that are particularly nauseous.)

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For example, in 2005, I saw an adjacent landowner to the future Mass Central Rail Trail corridor in Hardwick step up to buy a few hundred feet of the dead RR.  He wanted to block a future trail that would allow kids in the village to bike or walk past his house to get to a nearby elementary school.   In my ‘day job’ today, I’m a Realtor and of course I live and breathe dead RR corridor and have set up searches where I’ll be notified quickly if a key corridor becomes available for sale.

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That is when I set up Central Highlands Conservancy.  A hybrid land-acquisition set up to block sales of former RR corridor to adjoining landowners.  And also to put out high profile press-releases that highlighted the program that didn’t really protect corridor and allowed it to melt away before your eyes without you even seeing it disappear.  After I did this—and taught other groups how to do this—the sales started to slow down.  Funny how that happens. We blocked the sale of over nine miles—in five communities.  It is fun to help transform land trusts from a rectangular thinking org to a “Linear” thinking one. And now, finally,  we are getting help at the top level of the state government.

 

PINSLY RAILROAD COMPANY, A Real Railroad Company
https://businesswest.com/blog/pioneer-valley-railroad-is-a-moving-business-success-story/

Here’s a link to a story this week in a local Business magazine.  A story about the next generation of Pinsly family members taking the leadership role in the family business.  A real railroad company.

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I worked for Pinsly’s subsidiary company Railroad Distribution Services as a consultant in the mid-80s and later in the mid-90s, I was hired as the manager of the RDS unit in western Mass and to assist in the marketing of traffic to Pinsly’s local RR—the Pioneer Valley RR.  Right around that same time, my first book on rail trails and their history came out. Pinsly RR Co’s President, Maggie Silver-- daughter of Sam Pinsly who founded the company years earlier—loved my first book and what was happening in the rail trail realm.   

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Several years earlier, one of Pinsly’s RRs—the Frankfort and Cincinnati Railroad in KY-- was formally abandoned and ceased operations and they were surprised that the laws in KY stated that in most cases, abandoning a RR means giving up the land of the RR RoW to adjoining landowners.  

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Also in the mid to late 90s, the state of KY became alarmed when it became apparent that folks from neighboring states all around KY were driving through KY to get to other states where interesting and historic former RRs were converted to rail trails. 

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I was contacted by state officials in KY to come out and speak to a joint committee of State Reps and State Senators about rail trails and why they were important. Since I was going to be out there for a few days, Pinsly made arrangements for me to meet w their local attorney along with local rail trail advocates to see what could be done with the old F&C RoW.

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After my presentation before the state elected officials and their staffs, a report was produced.  A report about why rail trails were important and it laid out an outline for a plan to save corridor in KY.  LINK HERE to the report.  The report led to the creation of a rail trail office within the KY Transportation Secretariat. Here’s the link to that.  And now 20 years later, corridor is being saved and several trails are open in KY now.   And here’s a link to a 3,000 word essay I wrote for a newspaper in northern VT , to weigh-in on whether of not the Lamoille Valley line should become a trail—or not.  A more illustrative piece on why pretend RRs don’t really work. LINK to that is here.

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Anyway, one of the other things I did in KY that week was to go and visit one of my customers who was based in Logan, KY.  Arco Aluminum produced 25,000 lb coils of aluminum that were sent via specialized box cars [8coils to a car] to our facility in western Mass.  We would unload, store and send out to the end user in eastern Mass –Crown Cork and Seal--when needed.  They stamp out aluminum cans for beer or soda and run 24/7. The facility was on a Guilford RR siding, but we could get there quicker, more reliably,  undented and cheaper than the railroad local to them.  At the time, it was the highest dollar cargo in boxcars travelling on CSX.  

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I hope you’ve enjoyed this little eye-opener about the rails to trail efforts taking place all over the country.  I produce a free monthly e newsletter that goes out to over 10,000 people and policy makers in 8 states.  Here’s a link to the most recent one.  

Craig Della Penna,
CraigDP413@Gmail.com
413 575 2277  

My real estate practice:  https://www.northamptonrealtor.com/innovator

Sugar Maple Trailside Inn.  Our Bed & Breakfast that sits 8 feet from one of the oldest muni-built trails in New England.  Our library contains one of the largest collections of RR history books in the region too.

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Oh, and btw, I also have a  org set up to preserve RR history on rail trails.  More on that here. https://www.nnnetwork.net/