California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from Atchison, T. & S. F. Ry. Co. v. Abar, 275 Cal.App.2d 456, 79 Cal.Rptr. 807 (Cal. App. 1969):
At least one California court has stated that 'the building and operating of a station' is permitted by a grant of a railroad right of way 'for railroad purposes only.' (City of Glendora v. Faus (1957) 148 Cal.App.2d 920, 926, 307 P.2d 976.) The grant provisions of the 1898 deed in the present case contain no such unlimited language. The term 'railroad purposes' appears only in the deed's definition of the use whose cessation will effect a reversion to the grantor; so used, the term does not operate to expand the extent of the use permitted by the deed. Thus, the trial court's finding of fact no. 2 is unsupported by the evidence to the extent that it declares the railroad to be the owner of a right of way 'for railroad purposes,' because the 1898 deed does not so provide. Finding no. 5, that the railroad has 'continuously used * * * (the right of way) * * * For railroad purposes' (italics added) is similarly unsupported. The only evidence of a railroad use for other than main line purposes was testimony that (as declared in finding no. 4) team tracks were operated in the vicinity in 1916 and in 1944. Neither of these was on the present Abar property, and the operation of neither of them gave the railroad any greater rights than it acquired in the 1898 deed.
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