Thanks to Ian, Ned, Matthew, Karen and Eric for your suggestions on trying to get a response from CSX on my ROW questions.

As a result of your suggestions, I was able to make contact with Elizabeth Brown at the CSX Real Property office. This is a great list! 

I some questions relating to trail design. We have some four miles of county road that occupy the old CSX ROW in Carter County. The county 
Fiscal Court is agreeable to our using ROW paralleling the county road as a multi-use trail. The ROW crosses two large bridges and will make a very nice trail.
The road is composed of the old RR ballast. Vehicular traffic volume is quite low. Some of the ROW is at mean ground level, but most of it rests on
a 6-7 feet raised ballast bed.

We are a very rural area and Kentucky has a very limited budget for trail development, so cost will be a major consideration in how we implement our trail.

In considering the dual use nature of the ROW, several issues have come up. 

1. What would be the safest/most asthetically pleasing way of separating the walking/biking trail from the roadway? 

So far we have considered:

- shrub and tree plantings (our first choice, but we would have to bring in a lot of soil to make an effective screen/safety barrier)
- a raised gravel berm (cheap, but gravel is not pretty)
- fence or other solid barrier (4 miles of anything would be a big budget hit for us)
- a ditch (something for someone to fall/drive into)


2. Since the county road cannot be easily moved or narrowed to make space for the trail, the ROW ballast base will probably need to be widened. 
The overall ROW is 100' wide, the rock ballast base is 40' wide on average, while the level roadbed is typically 25' wide. We are planning on a trail 
that's 8-10' wide, including the space for the barrier.

Some possibilites are:

- Widen the useable ROW with several hundred tons of rock. (rock is not expensive, but we would need a LOT!)
- Re-grade the ROW with a dozer, using the existing ballast to make the roadbed wider, but somewhat lower (not expensive, but in uncharted territory)
- Locate the trail on a parallel portion of the 100' wide ROW not built up with ballast. (many unknowns. could be very cheap or prohibitively expensive)

The first 30 photos at the link below are on the part of ROW we will be addressing first. These are the more interesting parts of the ROW, rather than typical.

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kycarter/Rails_to_Trails/photo_gallery/Leon_to_Denton/index.html

Thanks again for your help.

John

Carter County, Kentucky