Don't end up like Karen here (really her name) who misunderstands the nature of statutory law: https://www.cleveland19.com/2021/02/05/ ... ery-store/
Typically laws are very general (something like "the FRA shall regulate railroads in order to ensure the safety of the traveling public" etc.) whereas regulations spell out how the agencies in charge will enforce those laws. So there is probably not any detail in the authorizing law about what is necessary for Class III track standards (to use an example from another thread), the agency uses its judgement to determine those standards.

More:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/n ... 410074001/



More at the link.

That was the exact point I was passive-aggressively trying to make :) haha.

Unfortunately, Regulations usually have the force of Law, you still have to obey them. It's how they are made and changed that differs.
The Track Safety Standards are Regulations. The Federal Railroad Administration issued them. If you want to make or maintain you track differently, like without any cross ties, you can ask the Federal Railroad Administration for an exemption or waiver, or even to have the Regulation changed so everyone gets the benefit. There may be a Regulation telling how to ask in this particular case.
But the Federal Railroad Administration cannot allow you to violate the Railroad Safety Appliance Act by running a train without automatic brakes, or with manual link and pin couplers (unless the Law does give the FRA such permission to allow exceptions). You will have to get Congress to pass another Law to change things.
The Federal Railroad Administration has exempted some small railroads and tourist lines from some of its Regulations. But, it has said that it cannot give them any exemption from
the Railroad Safety Appliance Act because that is a Federal Law, not a Regulation.

“Unfortunately, Regulations usually have the force of Law, you still have to obey them.”

When it comes to safety (track standards, air brakes, and yes masks during a pandemic) I would use the term fortunately. Safety is a good thing.

I made the statement in reply to a previous participant in the thread stating that a new law had been enacted. Only the legislative body in government enacts legislation, which the executive signs or vetoes.

Regulatory bodies have discretion to make regulations, and that power, in the case of the federal government, only comes from legislation enacted by Congress. Regulations can be enforced, but once again, the authority to do so comes from legislation. The process by which TSA enacted this mask mandate is difference from say Congress enacting legislation on the issue. A key point is that the mask mandate expires (as of now), in that regulations are usually faster to enact, and can expire.

You may snarkily claim there is no difference, but there is, and it's a distinction worth noting.

Also, why be admittedly passive aggressive?

“You may snarkily claim there is no difference, but there is, and it's a distinction worth noting.”

I wasn’t claiming that. I was genuinely asking is 3-step a law? Or is it a regulation?

Best that I can find with an Internet search, it's a Railroad Rule, not a Federal Regulation or Law. The CSXT version isWith this rule in effect, you can't have a steam, electric, hydraulic, or mechanical locomotive operate on CSX, because they don't have generators to have a Field Switch on! Since some railroads do get away with using such locomotives and letting employees foul equipment, I doubt it is a Federal Regulation or Law.
By the way, there is a Federal Railroad Administration Regulation about what MUST be in a railroad rule book, and what must be enforced, like "Blue Flag Rules".

Well, from what Jayrod posted earlier, it looks like TSA seems to be cutting-and-pasting the FRA's regulatory framework.

Mind you, FRA may be nice guys, but that's not the only reason they afford tourist railways the "FRA Lite" treatment. They've been ordered to by Congress: 49 USC 20103, and that's a law not a reg.

Laws are voted by a consensus process between both houses of Congress, and signed by the president. The laws give regulatory agencies general authority to regulate and say what Congress wants the regulations to do. The regulatory agencies work out the fine details. For instance Congress says to regulate track conditions, but FRA regulations says class 3 track can have 1-1/4" deviation in a 50' chord or whatever. Congress would never codify that in a law, too detailed to even read, and too brittle - if it needs tuning, it would take an act of Congress to change it. Left to the FRA, they can adjust it in their normal rulemaking.



There were already layers of health regulations in place. To start with, you had your county health department. (or in some cases a city; e.g. Berkeley CA is separate from Alameda County and turning in much better COVID numbers). Then you have your state health department - for instance in Michigan they kicked up such a fuss about Gretchen Whitmer's executive orders, but her orders simply repeated what the health departments were already doing.

Now there's a case to be made that excursion railroads aren't bona-fide travel and should be out of the jurisdiction of TSA ... but that does nothing to get you out of the jurisdiction of state and local health departments.

It would be a tough legal stretch for a tourist railway to claim Federal override when you've slipped between the cracks of Federal regulation. And the optics would be terrible - last thing a railroad needs the public to hear is "We don't care about your safety".



Really. This is a very dangerous virus, and it's not a surprise - Tom Clancy foresaw it, as usual (in *Executive Orders*). People catch it and are contagious for weeks before symptoms appear, so everybody is Typhoid Mary. And *many* healthier people have symptoms mild enough that they never realized they had it, and had been contagious the whole time. It isn't "just the flu", "COVID long-haulers" take lingering or permanent damage. This is a perfect storm scenario for a virus to spread uncontrollably.

Stack on top of it people's frustration with the ever-changing "best practices" (as we learn more about this *new* virus). And then the political situation, and new habit of rejecting genuine truth anytime it's inconvenient... and the election cycle bumping COVID out of the news so people thought the coast was clear. A perfect storm meets a perfect storm.

Everyone got sick to death of restrictions around June, "hey, weren't we supposed to have won this thing?" and got numb to the daily reports of new highs etc. So people didn't realize how bad it got. It's fallen somewhat now, but only from "nightmarish" to "absolutely horrible". If your state had it really bad last March, your average is now "down to" your March/April peak, when the shelter-in-place orders were maxed out. If you were spared in March/April, current numbers are many times worse, and worse than the midsummer peaks too.



All that to come back around to this: Boards have to work in actual reality, not Facebook fantasyland. Two Boards I work with suspended operations, for a reason I view as very correct: If the operation caused a super-spreader event, our name would be mud, and our civil liability could be endless.


But also... if volunteers have to enforce mask orders, that's gonna really suck and there's no way for the organization to win that scenario. The early adventurers will be (already are) the Covid-denier "Karens" who are polarized, prepared, and looking to pick a fight. Walmart can handle them because it has a top legal department writing procedure and they train their staff on it, who need their jobs badly. Not so good for us though. It'll get ugly and all over Youtube, and it will offend everyone, them either thinking you did too little or too much.

Way I see it, the vaccine plan is going to be a ramp-up, and we should be well over 1 million vaccines a day by the end of April. That means by July 4, 50-70% of Americans will have either had the vaccine or had COVID. Epidemiologically, that's enough to slow it down naturally, and as such, I think states will be winding back mask requirements and so Karen encounters won't be a factor.

For us it was center reverser, throttle off, open cylinder cocks.

I was always under the impression it was an FRA requirement for us but it didn’t really matter since it was in our rule book either way.

I cannot think of anyway to up-vote this comment enough!

Brian

Evidently you only have to wear a mask in public areas, in or around trains and stations. I see no other areas such as private railroad property that require the wearing of a mask.

https://www.tsa.gov/sites/default/files ... -21-01.pdf

2. Any person in public areas of transportation hubs/facilities controlled by the
owner/operator (such as for purposes of purchasing tickets, waiting areas, and
platforms for boarding and disembarking) for the duration of travel, boarding, and
disembarking.

If you are still operating a dinner train, they just made it more unpleasant.

2. While eating, drinking, or taking oral medications for brief periods4 • Prolonged periods
of mask removal are not permitted for eating or drinking; the mask must be worn
between bites and sips.

I see the provision that if you can finish eating in under 15 minutes, you don't have to put your mask back on between bites and sips.

That's in the bailiwick of the local or state health departments.

But what I was saying earlier about being a "no-win scenario", here's an example of a tourist railway getting off lightly. This could have been much worse.

The relevant bit starts at 10:25 and is about 4 minutes long. I don't normally recommend rambling podcasts like this that are longer than *Lord of the Rings* extended edition, if you have 2 hours to kill, I can give you a long list of better media.

Multiple news stories in both the US and foreign media this morning indicate masks may be required for all of 2021. Here is a link to just one story, there were a half dozen showing this morning.

https://nypost.com/2021/02/12/biden-tel ... ntil-2022/

By the way if you want a very durable and comfortable mask that has good straps and a face-fitting foam surface, get an N100 respirator. See comments on brands by CDC:

https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/topics/ ... list1.html

PC