New guy here. Finding scrap metal close to a rail road right of way.

I will use an alias so as to not admit breaking the law by ignorance, specially if the rail road police read this. I will use the name Bman for now. I started scrapping a couple months ago; at first I was just looking for wood to build projects. Then as I was doing this I found lots of goodies people tossed and I would take them and sometimes sold them, sometimes kept them. Then, I realized I need to make money because I am unemployed. Everybody including my wife thinks I am a loser for attempting this kind of work. I have up days and my down days for sure! Couple of days ago I was scouting areas looking for metal. I went to several places and nothing. Saw a few homeless camps. Then I came across the railroad tracks and started to see all those spikes. I was totally unprepared to haul them. I didn't have anything to carry them except my pockets. None-the-less I picked up about 30 spikes and found a couple plates (I didn't know what they were when I found them). It did occur to me that I could be breaking the law but then I thought, they are just laying there, some buried, some bent, some rusted all to hell and so forth.
Today, I went out to a spot I went to before and started to look for the larger things, not spikes. I found a lot of metal. Most of this metal were rusted bent pipes or twisted rusted rods and what not. I also noticed several RR vehicles passing by looking at me. I got the evil eye a few times. Something told me it was time to leave. Think God! I did end up picking up a few metal objects. As I left and I am down this road, hardly any cars on the road, I cross paths with a cop that seemed to be in rush to go somewhere. Deep down, I felt he was coming for me. Apparently he did not have the description of my car otherwise I would have been busted.

So, I get home and then I thought I better research this more and discovered I was totally breaking the law. I got so scared I took all my RR finds and hid them in my garage versus my side yard where I keep all the other stuff. This is when I discovered the term 'right of way'. It seems to me that 20 feet is the magic number. I know I was way farther away than 20 feet. I would say, it was closer to 50 in some parts to 100 feet away. This is where I was finding this metal. Now, I understand that the property belongs to somebody or some company if not the RR. Where I was, nobody other than the RR personnel would call the cops. I wasn't climbing fences. I wasn't breaking anything to find the metal. There was a sign that said, "Do not Trespass" but that was about 30 feet away from me in the direction of the RR yard. My question is, can I still get arrested for taking this metal if I am not on the RR yard property? Keep in mind, I find it hard to believe that say a city or county employee would call the cops on me if they saw me taking rusted bent, unused, discarded metal that appears to be no use to anybody if I was on city/county property. Now if I was breaking into a car on city property-different story. If you find metal off RR property but close to RR property and whether it was RR property at one time or just bent metal (I swear, some of the stuff I found, it would be hard pressed for somebody to say what that was before it got bent and rusted) could the RR people still go after me? I am not saying that I want to break the law by taking metal off property that I did not get permission for, but metal is found on someone's property somewhere, right? If I find a metal pipe on the side of a road, that property belongs to somebody. Am I suppose to go to the county assessor's office, find out who owns that property and then contact them to see if I could pick up that pipe laying there? or that tire and rim that obviously somebody dumped? I am picking it up to recycle not dumping it.
I like to write long posts, I like details and I want to give out details so as to get a good answer. Thanks for reading. By the way, I did research the RR property issue before asking these questions, but did not find a question about if its close to their property.

Also, if the RR people hate trespassers then why did I see homeless people camping out on what appears to be RR property? One more thing, I am not even going to try to ask for permission, I cannot see them saying yes for safety reasons. I live in Sacramento which has its share of scrappers.

I don't have anything to add other than you're not as anonymous as you think.

Most legal scrapyards won't buy spikes or tieplates without a letter from the RR saying you have a scrap contract with them.

Around here you cant even walk the tracks as it is tresspassing. Found that out as a kid. The CN Railroad police followed us about 2 miles down the tracks and took us to the police station.

Glad my comment about how dumb this thread is got deleted. Once again a big THANKS.

Most yards have a big sign up saying it is against the law and if you are caught you will be fined.

A lady someware in florida spent a year in jail for picking up metal along the rail road tracks. CSX dosn't play around.

this guys posts read like a lot of the spam email i get