Rail Bank

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It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with rail trail. (Discuss)

A Rail Bank is a USA system whereby the right-of-way, land and route of a closed railway is preserved so that service can be restored if circumstances change at a later time.

The land over which railways pass may often have many different owners - private, rail operator or governmental - and, depending on the terms under which it was originally acquired, the type of operating rights may also vary. Without Rail Banking, on closure, some parts of a railway's route might otherwise revert to the former owner. The owner could reuse them for whatever purpose he chose (for example, for building) or modify the ground conditions (remove embankments or fill-in cuttings), potentially prejudicing the line's future reuse if required.

A single section of a route changed in this way could have serious consequences for the viability of a restoration of a service, with the costs of repurchasing the land or right-of-way or of restoring the site to its former condition outweighting the economic benefit. Over the full length of a railway's route with many different owners the reopening costs could be considerable.

By designating the route as a Rail Bank, these complications are avoided and the cost of maintaining a right-of-way are removed from the railway operator. In the United States land transferred to Rail Banks is held by the state or Federal governments and many Rail Banks have been reused as Rail Trails.

In the United Kingdom, many thousands of miles of railway were closed under the Beeching Axe cuts in the 1960s and whilst a few of these routes have subsequently been reopened it is not clear whether any of these were formally treated as Land Banks in the US manner.