Orphan bridge

County Route 521 crossing Lackawanna Cut-Off November 2006

An orphan bridge is a roadway

bridge A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...

that crosses over abandoned

railroad Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...

rights-of-way Right of way is the legal right, established by grant from a landowner or long usage (i.e. by prescription), to pass along a specific route through property belonging to another. A similar ''right of access'' also exists on land held by a gov ...

and which is no longer owned or maintained by any railroad. Examples include the bridges that crossed over predecessor railroads that were conveyed into

Conrail Conrail , formally the Consolidated Rail Corporation, was the primary Class I railroad in the Northeastern United States between 1976 and 1999. The trade name Conrail is a portmanteau based on the company's legal name. It continues to do busin ...

in 1976. At the time, Conrail argued in U.S. court that these overhead bridges were not part of the rail rights-of-way that were conveyed to it at the time of the merger. As the railroads that initially built the bridges and maintained them no longer existed, it was argued, successfully, that, in essence, no legal entity owned them and that, as a result, they were "orphan" bridges. An example of this is the never-used Conrail bridge which parallels Delaware Avenue and crosses

U.S. Route 9W U.S. Route 9W (US 9W) is a north–south U.S. Highway in the states of New Jersey and New York. It begins in Fort Lee, New Jersey, as Fletcher Avenue crosses the US 1–9, US 46, and the Interstate 95 (I-95) approache ...

in Kingston, NY. Bridges Real property law {{rail-transport-stub