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Found this while browsing around. A tiny little sliver of a former ROW

Interesting ... most of that ROW has been merged with the neighboring property or transferred to a new owner. Apparently that piece got forgotten.

There are other properties listed for Penn Central, but I have not looked to see if they are orphans or simply have not had their name changed. West of the property you highlighted is an active portion of the line - it is listed as CSX.

Given Penn Central has been gone 40 some years, who pays the taxes?

It seems that when the railroad companies merge, they don't bother changing the name on all their properties. Around Grand Rapids, all the CSX lines are still listed as "CHESAPEAKE & OHIO RY". Hughart yard is listed as "PENNDEL COMPANY", but actually is owned by NS and leased to GDLK. Other NS owned parcels are listed as "PENN LINES LLC" or "CONRAIL RR".

So the parcel in Indy is most likely owned by a PC sucessor, CSX or NS.

Has anyone seen the corporate structure chart of Penn Central in "Wreck of the Penn Central" I don't know how Conrail ever made sense of who owned what when they cleaned up the mess. I would not be surprised if entire mainlines that are still in use have sections of no-man's land that hasn't had the taxes paid in decades.

OSRR wrote:Given Penn Central has been gone 40 some years, who pays the taxes?

I'd guess American Premier Underwriters - they're the corporate survivor to Penn Central.

This isn't unique, Norfolk Southern still has parcels of the long abandoned former Clover Leaf in Henry County Ohio - and that's been gone for over 40 years. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a entry level person in the tax department that gets a stack of tax bills and dutifully pays them out year after year.

OSRR wrote:Given Penn Central has been gone 40 some years, who pays the taxes?

The image above notes that the property is exempt. If one looks at the tax record, the property has an assessed value of $0.
(Although the valuation also notes that the property has a "kitchen sink" and "water heater".)

Interesting find.

If I recall correctly, when Contrail was formed the railroad assets of Penn Central Transportation Co. were transferred to Conrail.

That the real estate people were able to even identify what Penn Central owned is evidence of why large entities become bureaucratic. PCTC owned a lot of real estate. Some of the real estate even hosted railroad tracks. The PCTC remained as an entity after the creation of Conrail and became as someone noted earlier American Premier Underwriters, an insurance company.

Along the way what was Penn Central made a lot of money for their shareholders. Much of this money was from the real estate holdings of the former PRR and NYC empires.

The railroad properties may not have all been identified and conveyed to Conrail. These orphans go unnoticed as they are exempt from taxation. I have often wondered how much orphan property is out there.

Standard Railfan wrote:Interesting find.

If I recall correctly, when Contrail was formed the railroad assets of Penn Central Transportation Co. were transferred to Conrail.

That the real estate people were able to even identify what Penn Central owned is evidence of why large entities become bureaucratic. PCTC owned a lot of real estate. Some of the real estate even hosted railroad tracks. The PCTC remained as an entity after the creation of Conrail and became as someone noted earlier American Premier Underwriters, an insurance company.

Along the way what was Penn Central made a lot of money for their shareholders. Much of this money was from the real estate holdings of the former PRR and NYC empires.

The railroad properties may not have all been identified and conveyed to Conrail. These orphans go unnoticed as they are exempt from taxation. I have often wondered how much orphan property is out there.

Conrail did not accept all the railroad tracks into their system did they? There were a lot of tracks that were not included in the new Conrail system, and as a result were either sold off to local government agencies, or were sold to shortlines. Those that did not make the cut and were not wanted as shortlines, were still owned. Did Conrail still get those rails as well, or were they still the property of the Penn Central company, which still owned the rails?

I know a question was recently raised about the KBEC in Michigan. That was formed from the Penn Central Jackson-Grand Rapids branch. Conrial is listed as abandoning a portion on 4-1-1976. Did this ROW revert to the previous owner (Penn Central), or did Conrail still own it?

chapmaja wrote: I know a question was recently raised about the KBEC in Michigan. That was formed from the Penn Central Jackson-Grand Rapids branch. Conrial is listed as abandoning a portion on 4-1-1976. Did this ROW revert to the previous owner (Penn Central), or did Conrail still own it?

The only way to determine for certain what happened to a particular parcel is to conduct a title search. There may be an archive site on the internet that may discuss the individual sales of lines, but I would not expect to find a great amount of detail.

You may want to visit Multimodal ways. http://www.multimodalways.org/archives/rrs/rrs.html There is a lot of information on this site. For lines in Michigan, I believe the University of Michigan ended up with a collection of PC records for the lines in Michigan. There is an index for the U-M archive online, but not many documents.