SRich wrote: ↑Wed Dec 25, 2019 6:54 pm
What is meant by buying railroad right-of-way? I know that track-miles means that the track passes from one owner to another, but i wonder what the RoW buying stands for. Trackage rights?
There are two things occurring in this transaction. In one part from Washington to Richmond the railroad is selling half of the land (imagine two lanes of a four lane highway). As it so happens the "right of way" they are buying is half of an existing railroad corridor split down the middle so that two tracks would be for freight and two would be for passenger use. The reason why there are differences between track miles and right of way is because most of the passenger corridor to Richmond does not have third and fourth tracks present. Consequently the total land miles differ from the track miles. Virginia and Amtrak will have to build the 3rd and 4th tracks but they will now have the land to do so and an operating agreement with the adjacent freight railroad that will ensure cooperation.
Another corridor the "Buckingham Branch" is being bought in whole (land and all tracks). So in that case land miles = single track miles. There may be a few miles of long passing sidings which would mean more track miles as well.
The topic of this discussion is the so-called "S-Line" right of way which is land only. The tracks were torn up circa 1988. So no track miles to count there because there aren't any tracks!
It is worth noting that restoration of tracks over such a long corridor is virtually unprecedented in the U.S.. Furthermore even in the limited cases where tracks have been reinstalled it was always for very slow freight service, often to a single specific customer, and not high speed passenger rail.