If you live along the old line, you have been living next to this corridor a lot longer than we've been talking about it, and you have every right to ask what a trail is going to mean for you. These are the questions we've heard most often, at the public meetings in 1997 and 1998, at work days, and over a good many back fences. The answers are as honest as we can make them. Where we don't know, we say so. Where the answer belongs to the park district, which owns and runs the trail, we say that too.

One of our officers, Glen Kerr, farms land on both sides of the corridor up near milepost 6.6. He stood up at the first public meeting in 1997 and spoke against the whole idea for ten minutes, and a lot of what he said was fair. Two years later he's our landowner liaison. If you'd rather talk to a neighbor than to a committee, talk to Glen.

This is the first question at every meeting, and it's a reasonable worry. Studies of rail-trails in other states, which asked the neighbors themselves before and after the trails opened, have generally found that crime didn't go up, and that most neighbors who were worried at first stopped worrying once the trail was open. Part of the reason is simple: an abandoned railroad line with nobody on it is where people used to go to do things they didn't want seen. A trail with joggers and grandmothers and kids on bikes on it from dawn to dusk is a lot less private.

Here, since Phase I opened in June, the park district rangers tell us they have had no reports of break-ins or vandalism along the trail. Their calls have been a lost dog, two flat tires, and a man who locked his keys in his car at the Brannock lot. We'll keep asking, and we'll post it here if that changes.

Some might, especially at first, when they don't know where the trail ends and your yard begins. The park district will post "Private Property, Please Stay on the Trail" signs anywhere a landowner asks, and it will put up a fence along the boundary if you want one; just ask. Most trail users are glad to stay on the pavement. If someone doesn't, call the park district rangers, and tell us too.

The trail is carry-in, carry-out, with trash cans only at the trailheads, because cans along the trail fill up and blow over. The Friends do a litter walk on the open section the first Saturday of every month, and honestly, there's less to pick up every time. The old corridor, before the trail, had tires, mattresses and a refrigerator in it. We hauled out eleven pickup loads in 1998. Nobody has dumped a refrigerator on the trail since.

That's a fair concern, especially where the line runs close behind houses in Brannock and Fenwick. If you'd like a screen, the Friends will plant one on the trail side of your property line, at no cost to you: white pine, spruce or arborvitae, your choice, planted by volunteers. We've done fourteen so far. We also don't put benches near houses, and we've asked the park district not to. And the trail closes at dusk, with no lights, so nobody's out there at night.

We can't promise you anything about your house. What we can tell you is that studies of trails in other places have generally found that being near a trail either didn't change home values or helped them a little, and that people who buy near a trail often list it as a reason they bought. We've noticed that two houses for sale in Fenwick this summer had "near the new rail-trail" in the newspaper ad. That's not a study. It's just something we noticed.

The park district owns the trail, and the park district maintains it: mowing the shoulders, plowing the lot, fixing the pavement, clearing fallen trees, and paying for it out of its budget, like any other park. You are not responsible for mowing or maintaining any part of the trail. The Friends help with brush cutting, planting, litter and the depot, but we're volunteers, and we're there to help, not to replace the park district. The park district also carries the insurance on the trail.

The old railroad culverts are being checked and fixed as each phase is built; two were replaced in Phase I that had been plugged for years, and a couple of fields along the line drain better now than they have in a generation. Where a farm lane crosses the corridor, the farmer keeps the right to cross, in writing, and the trail gets a gate and a sign. Glen worked out the language with the park district himself. Where there's livestock, there's fence. Dogs on the trail must be leashed, and that rule exists partly for your cows.

This is the hardest question, and the most honest answer is that it depends on your deed and on the law, and we're not the people to answer it for you. Here's the general picture. Some railroad land was bought outright. Some was only an easement across a farm, and under some old deeds an easement like that ended when the railroad stopped using it. Under rail-banking (see the front page), the corridor is not considered abandoned, so it stays together as a corridor instead of going back piece by piece. Some landowners in other states have gone to court over this, and the courts have had different things to say about whether they're owed compensation. If you think this applies to you, please talk to a lawyer, and take your deed. You can also ask the park district for its title work. We won't think any less of you for asking.

Almost certainly not. But under rail-banking, the corridor is held so that they could. If that ever happened, the railroad would have to get permission again, and the trail would make way.

You don't have to. We'd only ask you to walk the open section once, from Brannock to Fenwick, on a Saturday morning, and see who's on it. Last month I passed a man in his eighties doing his cardiac rehab walk, a mother teaching her daughter to ride without training wheels, a high school cross-country team, a woman in a power wheelchair who told me it was the first time in nine years she'd been in the woods, and two of my own patients, one with a new knee and one with a new hip, both of them doing better than I'd expected. That's what this is for.

Our meetings are open to everyone, the third Thursday of each month at 7 p.m. at the Fenwick village hall. The next one is Thursday, October 21. If you have a question that isn't on this page, come and ask it, or e-mail me, and I'll add the answer here.