IANAL - do we have any lawyers on the board who are willing to admit it? - but based on fights I've seen in the past in the planning game I suspect that this decision WILL make it much more difficult to use a rail easement for a trail. The old easements I've seen in reviewing some subdivisions are very open-ended ... as long as the land is used by a railroad ... but when the RR is gone (officially abandoned, not just out of service) the easement disappears and the land reverts to the original owner. THAT can get messy, of course, if the land surrounding the line has long since been sold off and sub/re-subdivided (who actually owns the land now?), but figuring that out and monetizing it is what we pay lawyers for.

The decision might not make R-to-T impossible - a clever lawyer might still argue that it's a narrow decision based on the specific facts of the case (possibly related to some quirk in the way the Feds did their easements Way Back When) - but I wouldn't be surprised to see some trails attacked and lose based on this precedent. One could of course argue that the land is still being held for future rail use and that the trail is temporary, so the rail use isn't completely extinguished - in fact that's what the R-to-T people claim though it sure seems otherwise in the rare cases where rail has gone back in. Using the line for a "temporary" trail might now need proof that future rail use is in fact feasible under reasonable circumstances.

Certainly something to be watched.