Re: Conflicting info, Safety Appliance Act

For historical review, it might be interesting to note that the Safety Appliance Act effective date was extended a number of times per the railroad's association request as designed in the act. A review was made of the progress, and the extension was approved postponing the effective date. One request for extension in 1903 was discovered to happen after the effective date of 9/2/1903 and the law was in effect. The SAA did not have a clause allowing extensions after the ACT was in effect.
But the narrow gauge roads of D&RG and the C&S persisted and somehow were given an extension to July 1, 1904.
At this point the railroad handled traffic strictly on the basic of the law applying to interstate movement and even handled link and pin and non-air cars in regular trains, usually on the rear within the state movement. The newspapers, such as Dolores, CO, picked up on this and threatened to file complaints to the ICC, claiming they would be fined. Much traffic on the RGS was re-routed via Ridgway and the D&RG's Marshall Pass line instead of the San Juan line through New Mexico.
This interpretation of the Law was not changed until October 30, 1911 when the Atlanta District Court Judge (Sou RR versus USA), admitting not having the authority, declared that all cars moving on interchange service on the connecting system would require compliance cars. This was because trainmen could not tell, without seeing a waybill, which car was interstate with safe ladders, or intrastate without any safety equipment. It still did not effect the private work equipment of any railroad that did not carry commerce. The ruling decision was illegal to the authority of the U.S. Constitution but it was generally accepted as the only possible course to keep the lines operating and all the trainmen safer. Union complaints about the usage of links to connect engines to train cars of Miller hooks or Miller hook engines connecting to MCB couplers by links was never progressed beyond the lower court rulings. The Companies and Unions both lost and won in this outcome. The non-air and link-and-pin cars became company service equipment, sold to private lines, or were burned at this point.