MidlandMike
M636C, the US has a long history of strong private property rights. As I remember "crown lands" were a sore point at the time of the revolutionary war for independence. Out west there are ranches, and then a lot of US Bureau of Land Management public grazing land. The BLM lands are leased to ranchers for grazing, but the ranchers protect their cattle, and pretty much treat their leased land as their own private property. .While the BLM land may be open to recreation, I know of cases where ranchers have kicked hunters off the leased land, with no recourse taken by BLM.
There was a recent extreme example of a group of armed ranchers taking over and occupying a federal wildlife sanctuary office in Oregon for some weeks. During the standoff one of the group was shot and killed by police at a checkpoint. A local jury found the group leaders innocent of wrongdoing, although they said they did not approve of their methods.
Back to the Abo Canyon highway bridge. In the US, roads are generally easements, and the surrounding land owners own the property (the government wants those property taxes). Even if the adjacent property is government land, in some jurisdictions they pay a reduced "tax" to support local services. Generally pedestrians have the right of movement along public roads, except where prohibited such as limited access highways and major bridges without sidewalks. Looking at the highway bridge photo, if I wanted to take a railfan picture, I would walk on the road-side of the guardrail, and then wait until there was no traffic on the bridge.
In Australia it is the state government and not the federal government that "owns" rural land.
This is partly because federation took place relatively more recently (1901) and the state legislature and regulations were well established by that time.
Regardless of the exact title, agricultural and grazing land should not be entered without permission of the lessee or other title holder.
However I would think that the entire easement of a public road would be accessible to the public for reasonable purposes, such as parking a vehicle off the pavement in areas where no Armco type barriers are provided.
I would also assume that the fences installed by the highway authority marked the edge of the easement, and that they could build road on any part of that easement to meet traffic demands.
There is a vaguely similar bridge on the "Golden Highway" (so named because it links a number of long depated gold mines). This area recently had a third track added on a steep grade and the additional track was given an easier grade than the former double track, and is in a deeper section of cutting.
A new longer bridge was required for the new third track. The new bridge was located east of the old bridge. This left a stub of the former pavement heading toward the cutting.
This is a popular spot for railfans, owing to good lighting in the early afternoon and a view of the three tracks making a reverse curve with mountains in the background, and frequent coal trains. A shot from this location is on the cover of the second edition of my book "An Australian Locomotive Guide" which can presumably be found by your favourite search engine.
Certainly there are no concerns from the track authority, the train operators, the local farmers nor the state police, who use that stretch of road as a trap for speeding motorists, and make no comment to railfans standing or parked behind the Armco.
The bridge is a little wider than that at Abo Canyon, and there is a hump which means that cars (and trucks) approaching from the north east can't be seen, and can't see photographers on the bridge when photographing westbound trains descending the grade.
But certainly, local authorities have no objection to railfans making use of the whole road easement, made more convenient by the bypassed pavement.
I sometimes stand on the bridge, particularly if two trains are climbing the grade together and the nearer train is leading, to get a clear shot of the second train.
Getting two trains climbing and one descending is possible but doesn't happen often...
My attempt to use Google gave this result:
Sadly this shows two tracks and the old bridge, at least five years ago..
So, I would be very surprised if anyone, landowner or police, objected to someone standing on the embankment outside the Armco, and I believe this would be much safer than standing on the Abo Canyon bridge. As I've said, there is no grass in that particular area for snakes to hide in (although they might want to sun themselves there)
As I've said before walking (carefully) on the road side of the Armco might be less annoying to local reptiles, but the cars are more dangerous than the snakes.
M636C
