UP, BNSF & AAR Suit May Settle Durango Smoke @#$%&

UP, BNSF & AAR Suit May Settle Durango Smoke @#$%&
The Southern California Air Quality Management District was sued in US District Court on March 7, 2006 by the BNSF, UP, and American Association of Railroads for interfering with interstate commerce. The District is trying to ban certain idling of locomotives. This suit will clarify the railroad claim the bans are unconstitutional because only federal government can regulate the rails.
California has 35 air districts (a dozen between San Diego and Sacramento) and the railroad says they couldn’t move any traffic if they had to comply with each having different rules. A spokesman for SCAQMD says “it time for the railroad to abandon their 19th century mentality to all local regulations…”. But he is ignorant that all railroads are a 19th century technology with their air brake system and uses the eons old rules of resistance, weight and motion. If you don’t keep the engines running to keep the air pumped up the brakes will fail.
The recent Federal Laws for permissible railroad locomotive exhaust clearly exempts “Steam Locomotive” from any provision of the law. Therefore, this Federal Law exempts The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad from being under any air quality district actions. Also, the D&S NG steam locomotives move through various towns and into two counties, likely different air quality districts.
The earlier posting here about the Surface Transportation Board making any “adverse abandonment” would be very unlikely (and likely illegal) while and when tariffs can be applied and traffic moved on a live and active railroad. Didn’t I recently read about the D&S hauling Big Horn Sheep from Rockwood to Elk Park or into the mountains? And, the various LCL traffic to Ah Wilderness Guest ranch at Tacoma is a continuously occurring user of the common-carrier tariffs, I believe.
So depending on the favorable outcome of the Mega-Railroad suit, the D&SNGRR will see that the gray tone of the law will then be black and white, whereby they will then have a strong case to also sue the smoke @#$%& and the air quality board at Durango who are interfering with their interstate commerce.