An important distinction should be made here. This seems to refer to rail banking abandoned lines that are on an easement for railroad use.

When a railroad is abandoned, the land usually is either owned outright by the railroad or it was only an easement and reverts back to the original land owner. It isn't unusual to a railroad line on what had been originally set aside as a city street, so the land reverts back to the city. As other railroads were being built, landowners or businesses offered them an easement as part of the incentive to build - back when having a local rail line was considered an asset.

It doesn't appear that land OWNED outright by a railroad is an issue, or if the easement is actually used as a railroad, but that converting land to a trail for rail banking is not a "railroad" use so the property must either revert to the underlying owner of the easement or they have to be compensated. I can see the arguement here.

This does seem to potentially disrupt the purpose of maintaining corridors for future rail use, but many citites just want the right-of-way for a trail with no intention of ever seeing rail use again.

I guess if an easement is involved, the railroad would need to suspend service and not salvage the track to have some kind of legal standing. But, the land owners have used adverse abandonment proceedings before.