Fascinating story. Thanks for sharing.
I've been on the High Line trail and I'm so glad that they left a lot of the track and such in place. My experience with rail trails is that they usually remove any sign of the railroad. I used to live in Matawan NJ and there is a rail trail there. A bumper was to the side of it for a siding. One day that bumper was removed.
I moved to Edison, NJ and I used to walk the old Lehigh Valley line before they cleaned it up and made the Middlesex Greenway. One day I was walking there and I met a gentleman who was marveling at home mother nature made the ravine. I told him it wasn't mother nature but rather the railroad company.