@freemo I think there's a lot of unused railway tracks out there. Using an active line will require permissions, coordination and such.

The landscape on the photos is wonderful!

@design_RG It is a lovely photo.

But my thinking is that if tracks are unused they probably have too much debris on it to use. Tracks require a lot of work.

@freemo It's possible, yes, I haven't read the article yet - it's open on a To Do tab, but there's a lot of action here in fedi to respond to. 😉

Will read and see what they say.

I have traveled on some old right of way trails in the US, but they had lost their tracks completely. Still, they are wonderful places, like the Great Alleghany Passage trail.

150 Miles, 240 Km of scenic Pennsylvania to travel by bike, on foot or on skis this time of the year. Some nice photos of it :

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=great+allegheny+passage+trail

@design_RG whats a "right of way" trail.. this is new to me and cool

@freemo It's the land a railway has possession and title to, where they once operated a rail line.

They own the land, and when they decide to abandon the line, it sometimes is possible to buy it off them, and convert to a pedestrian, cycling, hiking trail.

I visited one in Virginia, called the Virginia Creeper Trail. The city of Abingdon bought the old rail line right of way, it was converted to this type of trail, and now brings many people and millions of dollars per year to the region.

Costed them about $25,000 USD at the time, so it was a huge economic gain.

I walked parts of it, no bike on hand; but there's lots of rental places available. About 100 Km long.

Some photos of it: https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=virginia+creeper+trail

And info on the trail: http://www.vacreepertrail.com/information/geninfo.htm

@design_RG Oh that makes sense. So the whole track would have to be owned by one person. You'd have to actually buy up a stretch of track first. But that makes sense.

@freemo For a trail conversion yes, you need to get the property to convert it. Lost of work and money to spend, then maintain the trail - these bridges and viaducts specially.

But I believe those people on the original article on WSJ are just paying a fee to ride on the unused tracks.

There are some rail preservation associations in the UK that actually bought stretches of rail line, and operate old steam trains as tourist attractions, and that is lovely too.

We have a couple here in Ontario, possibly there's some in the US as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Simcoe_Railway

@kapoorrajat1857 Ooh, really?

Sorry, Pranoy. I use a Firefox version, and a Firewall bypassing add-on. Works well for many other sites too.

https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox

I didn't realize it was blocked to most people, sorry.

@design_RG Thank you Rob, will check it out 👍