Skinner—Appraisal of Railroad Property. 799 
that the two rights of way over most of this distance are prac¬ 
tically a single strip of land. 
The third line extends into a region which was throughout 
its whole length without convenient transportation facilities* 
At the time the right of way was purchased, there was still 
much valuable timber along the line, and most of the district 
already gave promise of becoming a rich agricultural district. 
Of the three cases mentioned, this line was unquestionably the 
most favorable to the company building the road. 
A careful man 4 was set to work upon these lines to deter¬ 
mine the relation existing between the ordinary value and the 
right of way value. The method used to determine the market 
value of adjacent property was exactly the same as that describ¬ 
ed in detail below for the determination of the value 
of the right of way for all lines in the state, and in all 
three cases extra care was taken to prevent errors creeping in¬ 
to the work. The amounts paid for the pieces of right of way 
and their acreage were determined from the offices of the reg¬ 
isters of deeds in the counties through which the lines run, and 
the acreage was carefully checked by comparison with the maps 
in the offices of the several companies. 
In order to place the results of these investigations beyond 
all question, Mr. H. E. Brandt was directed to secure data re¬ 
garding the cost of the right of way of a branch of the Chicago* 
and Northwestern built from Dixon, Illinois, to Peoria, Illi¬ 
nois, in the year 1900. This line, which is about 41 miles long, 
runs nearly due north and south through some of the best 
farming land in the state. The right of way was purchased 
under conditions favorable to the company. The methods em¬ 
ployed in this investigation were substantially the same as 
those employed in the other three cases. However, for a part 
of this line the sales of land near the right of way were so few 
that it was deemed advisable to determine the ordinary value 
of the right of way indirectly. To obtain this value through 
one township in each of the counties of Stark and Marshall, 
4 This work was done by Mr. C. M. Larson, a recent graduate of the 
civil engineering course in the University of Wisconsin, and under the 
direct supervision of Mr. W. D. Taylor, engineer of the board. 
