Note that a line can look and in practice be abandoned without legally being so. Much of the NWP is a classic example. Until recently, somebody with enough money could have bought access to it (from NCRA) and resurrected all or a portion of the line, and SMART hopes to someday do exactly that with the rest of its section of the line up to Cloverdale (though even Healdsburg is kind of dreaming right now).

Also note that SMART, like Santa Cruz wants to, has a trail along the line in addition to active rail, and is like many others facing lawsuits from that crop of attorneys over trail use of the r/w (along with rail) violating the terms of the railroad easement. They allege that the railroad can be a railroad, but if a trail also (not even instead of) arrives it's no longer a railroad and the easement reverts or must be paid for to somebody claiming to have a relationship to the original owner of the land (plus attorneys' fees of course). Not sure how those suits (which are now common) have turned out. The same legal theory is the basis for the NWP lawsuits and the one that started this string.

Again, (Webdigger?), how have previous such suits turned out, and have there been any appeals? I vaguely recall some kind of suit against the Feds over a conversion in one of the flyover states, where the claim was that the acquisition of the land from the federal government by the predecessors of the present owner(s) - through homesteading and other programs - with the railroad reserved, was ONLY for the railroad and when it was abandoned the reservation automatically reverted to the adjacent landowners (no mention of trails in the reservation over 100 years ago...