Ok, WE would all be enthralled, out collecting car numbers, photos, paint chips, etc but to most anybody else they're an eye sore and unwelcome. Being an exlegal beagle I am curious about whether such car storage can be challenged under zoning laws or a public nuisance. To a consider extent the railroad AS a railroad is grand fathered in but not necessarily. Here in Durango the D&S had to change their operations due to complaints from local residents. And quite successfully I might note as I think the railroad won some awards and certainly peace and quiet instead of a constant parade of people complaining before the city council. Or in the "real" world Barrington IL had the CN tied in knots for years when the CN wanted to change the train count from a half dozen per day to 20 or so to day.
So no complaints while a railroad operates AS a railroad...train shows up, blow whistles, us foamers foam and it disappears over the horizon. But when a railroad is storing cars for years on end doesn't it become a scrapyard and so can be regulated under the zoning laws? Ownership of the ROW is not carte blanche to do whatever you want to as long as it has some sort of connection, no matter how tenuous to being a railroad. The SL&RG can not suddenly decide that radioactive sludge makes terrific ballast and spread in a foot deep on the tracks. Or bring in gondola cars loaded with domestic waste and burn it as the car is just en route from NYC to Monte Vista.
I am reluctant to open such obvious flamer bait over @#$%&, EPA, etc but I think its important to remember that any railroad operates in a very real political and legal (and ever PR...let the public be damned!) landscape that it ignores at its own peril.
So let the flaming begin...Rockies are about to sweep the Giants!
Husker Hank
EX legal beagle
Durango CO
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/24/2017 05:31PM by gregcoit.
