What is the test for establishing that a property is a monument to a railway easement?

Here we hold that appellants' claim must fall [268 Cal.App.2d 83] because of a defect and a lack of strength in their claim of title. Even if appellants' arguments concerning respondents' deeds were correct they do not fulfill appellants' burden in establishing his own strength of title in these lands. Appellants concede, as they must, that the metes and bounds description of their lands did not in any way designate as a boundary or monument of their property or railroad easement. Appellants argue that Faus v. Nelson, supra, announces a rule of law that where there is a conveyance of land which abuts lands burdened with a railroad easement, it is presumed to convey to the center thereof unless a contrary intent appears from the deed. Appellants then argue that the presumption is not rebutted by their metes and bounds description.

Appellants seek to extend the Faus v. Nelson rule beyond the holding of that case. Merely because a property abuts Any railway easement does not, as appellants claim, give rise to a presumption that they own to the center of the easement. The monument doctrine presumes an intent to grant to the middle of the monument (road, railway easement or stream) because the conveyance designates the object as a monument or boundary.