Interesting.. I'd love to see the exact wording of that clause. It sounds like a CYA clause - wherein if the county isn't happy with the NYS&W and wants a new operator, the NYS&W could just buy the line preventing them from being thrown out.
But as mentioned I can't imagine anyone willingly buying that line and going back into private hands because of the rediculous NYS taxes. You'd need to have a pretty good sized customer come in just to break even.
Of course if the RR bought it, they could just as easily scrap the tracks and sell the land off, might even make money that way. That's probably the biggest threat they can hold over the county.
So the question becomes, what could the county do to get the RR to give up it's right to the RR without excercising the buy clause. Maybe the new management will think about it differently. Assuming someone else could be successful in generating traffic there, the NYS&W will still get at least a portion of the revenue.
Is NYRI the group behind the power lines? It seems to me that no one's really in favor of that project, if the county isn't for it I'd think they'd have a hard time with the eminent domain. Should the county take it back, they can't just bring in someone else as operator to repair the washouts and try to find some way to bring traffic to the line?