DORCHESTER CO., Md. - A federal judge has sided with a group of Eastern Shore property owners in a dispute over plans to convert a former railroad corridor into a public recreational trail.
The case involves 13 landowners and 18 parcels along a roughly 15-mile railroad corridor in Dorchester and Caroline counties. The landowners sued the federal government in 2024, arguing the conversion of the former rail line to a recreational trail amounts to a taking of their property requiring compensation under the Fifth Amendment.
The corridor dates back to the Baltimore and Eastern Shore Railroad, which acquired easements across most of the properties involved in the case in the 1890s. Those easements allowed the railroad to operate across land that remained owned by the underlying property owners.
The dispute arose after the Maryland and Delaware Railroad Company filed notice in March 2024 that it intended to terminate service along several sections of the rail line, including portions between Cambridge and Linkwood and between Hurlock and Preston.
That same day, Dorchester County petitioned the federal Surface Transportation Board to allow the otherwise abandoned railroad corridor to be converted into a public recreational trail, according to court records. The Maryland Transit Administration, which owns the rail line, reportedly consented to the request.
In August 2024, the Surface Transportation Board issued a Certificate of Interim Trail Use, allowing the corridor to be used as a recreational trail while preserving it for possible future railroad service. The landowners challenged that action, arguing the railroad only held easements for railroad purposes and that converting the corridor into a public trail created a new use of their property.
The federal government disagreed. It argued that under Maryland law, the railroad easements were broad enough to include recreational trail use and that converting the corridor therefore did not amount to a taking.
In an opinion filed Sept. 14, 20206, U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Ryan Holte sided with the landowners.
Central to the court's decision was language contained in deeds dating to the 1890s, which granted the Baltimore and Eastern Shore Railroad a right-of-way “for its road bed.”
Holte examined historical and modern definitions of “road bed,” Maryland court decisions, and examples of how the term was used around the time the deeds were written. He concluded the language created an easement specifically limited to railroad purposes rather than a general right-of-way that could also be used as a public walking trail.
The court found that easement was also limited to railroad purposes because there was no evidence the property had historically been used for anything other than a railroad. Holte determined replacing the railroad with a walking trail represented a change in the nature of the property's use rather than simply an expansion of its existing use.
The judge ultimately concluded that converting the corridor from railroad use to a walking trail exceeds the scope of the easements held across the properties and granted the landowners' motion for partial summary judgment
The decision resolves the liability issue in favor of the property owners but does not determine how much compensation they could ultimately receive. The parties in the case have been ordered to file a joint status report by Oct. 14 proposing a timeline for the next stage of the proceedings.
