Re: Early train length laws
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gary laakso
Its very odd to have a train length provision in a state constitution and its not something the usual politically connected interests want. The question is then "who benefits" and i don't think its the local coupler sales guy. Smell test remains a good test. My money says a couple of union members were on the drafting committee and they did some trades to get support for the provision. The post convention rationalizations by politicians tend to be camouflage.
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Does the law apply to Mike Brock's layout? gary laakso south of Mike Brock vasa0vasa@earthlink.net
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From: George A. Walls To: STMFC@yahoogroups.com Sent: 9/17/2008 12:44:55 PM Subject: [STMFC] Re: Early train length laws This law was put in place by the people of AZ when developing the AZ State Constitution in 1912 and voted on by the people of AZ. I've not seen any reference to union involment. Santa Fe and SP railroads sued the state of AZ in 1924 to get it overturned. Didn't work. Law was set aside in 1942 because of WW2 and then later thrown out by Federal Supreme Court in 1945, as was mentioned earlier. Some information on this subject appears in David Myrick's book " Railroads of Arizona, Vol 4, pg 192-194" Several states have their own agencies that oversee railroad operations in their states and have been sucessful in maintaining those laws above what union or railroad wants. George A Walls Gary,sources" in my book. If it was not for "old timer sargents" steering us straight we wouldn't have servived in the war zones either. safety risks vs. impeding free trade across the states. including the olde timers when i was a pup, told me it was union lobbying for more work not coupler strength that was involved. If you look at class 1 railroad employment and the timing of the laws, there is a striking (no pun intended) correlation. There ought to be some mention of the views of the parties in the Supreme Court case and the briefs of the parties. pre-WWI "original source" documentation to back that up? . . . or even a general book on railroad history during those times? Longer trains would mean less train crews per ton moved. Looking at the State of Virginia Laws and Codes on the internet I find that the ministers were more influential in trying to ban movements of trains "not completely filled" with interstate commerce on Sundays (1908), or banning train crews from not being brought home before Sunday services (1890s), or prohibiting sales of liquor on trains, or even prohibiting passenger trains to pull reefers . . . because they might carry German-style beer from Cincinnatti down to Newport News (1890s). Plus, there were the Jim Crow laws. aren't suppose to say anything about Southern Culture without references to back it up. strength. The laws were desiged to maximize union employment and or overtime. The unions were pushing for federal laws to do the same thing. car freight train length limit. Rationale appears to be to minimize coupler failures resulting from higher slack-loads from longer trains? traffic between Kentucky, Ohio, WV, and Virginia . . . and Tidewater? Were other states considering maximum train length laws at the same time? Ohio seemed to be progressive in mandating 24-ft, 8-wheeled cabooses on interchange service circa 1914. it seems that these railroads at that time had enough problems just finding loco power to pull loaded coal trains up their grades . . much less making trains longer than 70-cars (even though they were going towards 100-car tracks in their coal classification yard improvements in the early 20s). Supreme Court decision declaring it to be a violation of the Interstate Commerce Act and therefore, unconstitutional. mandate won.maximum number of freight cars allowed per train?Yes. Arizona had a law limiting freight trains to 70 cars and The law dated to 1912; I don't know how consistently it'd beenhttp://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0325_0761_ZO.h tmldriving reason for building 120-ton and 90-ton "Battleship Gons" in the
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