Railroad property rights which are extinguished upon cessation of service by the railroad divest when the department of transportation or the railroad, having obtained authority to abandon the rail line, removes the track materials to the right-of-way. If the department of transportation does not acquire the line and the railway company does not remove the track materials, the property rights which are extinguished upon cessation of service by the railroad divest one year after the railway obtains the final authorization necessary from the proper authority to remove the track materials.
Iowa Code § 327G.76
Time of reversion
Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case Burgess v. United States (2013)
Most recently applied in Caquelin v. United States (May 2020)
[C24, 27, 31, 35, 39, §7861; C46, 50, 54, 58, 62, 66, 71, 73, 75, §473.1; C77, 79, 81, §327G.76]
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Iowa Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain Iowa statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.