After five years of chasing it, Scioto County Commissioners finally have their hands on the old Peavine railroad corridor — for the grand total of one dollar.
Commissioners voted unanimously Thursday to accept a purchase agreement with Norfolk Southern for roughly 24 miles of the former rail line, stretching from the Adams-Scioto County line to the trestle near the Scioto River.
For Commissioner Scottie Powell, it was a long-awaited moment.
“This is a project near and dear to my heart,” Powell said. “We’ve been chasing this for five years.”
Powell said that when he first took office, people told him acquiring the Peavine would never happen.
So he kept calling.
“I made it my mission to call the guy down in Atlanta about every other month to see if we could get this aligned,” Powell said.
A $1.3 Billion Rail Deal Helped Make It Happen
The breakthrough, Powell said, came through an entirely different railroad transaction.
When Cincinnati sold its rail line to Norfolk Southern for $1.3 billion, Powell said language buried in that agreement required Norfolk Southern to transfer the Peavine corridor to the State of Ohio.
That eventually brought calls from the Ohio Department of Transportation and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources asking whether Scioto County was still interested.
The answer was easy.
“Absolutely,” Powell said.
The county is now moving forward with the 24-mile section inside Scioto County, although Powell said final legal language still has to be approved and the use agreement must also go before the federal Surface Transportation Board.
Don’t Expect a Finished Trail Tomorrow
Getting the property is a major step.
It is not the same thing as having a finished bike trail.
Norfolk Southern has 180 days to remove rails, ties, and other railroad materials, with the possibility of a one-time 60-day extension.
The railroad will not remove anything associated with the bridges.
That means the county will inherit those structures — along with the responsibility of figuring out what it will take to make them safe for trail use.
After that comes the expensive part.
“We need to start going after grant money,” Powell said.
He estimated that paved trail construction has run roughly $100,000 per mile on other county projects.
At 24 miles, that puts a very rough estimate for the trail surface alone at $2.4 million to $2.5 million, before bridge and trestle work is added.
“It will be a phased project,” Powell said.
Why People Keep Asking About It
The old line has long been known as the Peavine, a nickname tied to its winding route through the hills and curves of western Scioto County.
The corridor runs through or near small communities including Otway and McDermott before heading toward Portsmouth.
Powell said the project has become one of the questions he hears most often.
He recently attended the Otway Covered Bridge Festival and said people there were eager to know what was happening with the rail trail.
“All these little communities understand the magnitude of this,” Powell said.
The county has discussed turning the abandoned line into a recreational trail for years, with hopes that it could become a tourism draw similar to other destination trail systems in Ohio.
Powell said a 24-mile trail would put Scioto County among the longer rails-to-trails projects in the state.
There Is One Big Catch
The arrangement is expected to preserve the rail corridor through what is commonly known as railbanking.
That means Norfolk Southern could potentially reclaim the corridor for railroad use in the future.
Powell said that if the railroad ever did return and put trains back on the line, it would have to reimburse the county for money invested in the trail.
That possibility is one of the risks that comes with the project, along with the county taking responsibility for bridges and trestles.
But commissioners made it clear Thursday that they believe the opportunity is worth pursuing.
Commissioner Will Mault called it “a wonderful thing.”
Commissioner Merit Smith agreed, and the board approved the purchase unanimously.
For now, there are still plenty of unanswered questions about grants, bridges, timelines, and total cost.
But after years of talking about the Peavine Trail as something that might happen someday, Scioto County has reached a very different point.
It is buying the railroad corridor for $1.