United States v. Chicago, Burlington & Quincy RailroadUnited States v. Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad
delivered the opinion of the court.
This was an action for penalties under the law of Congress relating to safety appliances. Four violations were charged. One consisted in using a car with a defective coupler and the others in running certain transfer trains without having the requisite percentage of air brakes so connected that they could be operated by the engineer.
The facts disclosed by the evidence are these: The defendant' operates a railroad which passes through Kansas City, Missouri, and is used largely in interstate commerce. Among its terminal facilities at that point are two freight yards known as the Twelfth Street yard and the Murray yard. These yards are on opposite sides of the Missouri River, the distance between their nearest'points being about two miles. The track connecting them is one by which passenger and freight trains enter and leave the city, in other words, a main-line track. For a distance of 3,000 feet it is upon a single track bridge spanning the river,, and off the bridge it intersects at grade twelve or fifteen tracks of other companies and passes through the Union Depot tracks. Besides its use by the defendant’s trains, a considerable portion of it is also the line by which the passenger trains and some of the freight trains of the Rock Island and Wabash railroads enter and leave the city.
Both yards are used for receiving and breaking up incoming trains, assembling and starting outgoing trains, and assorting, storing and distributing cars. To reach their ultimate destinations, whether on the defendant’s road or on those of other carriers, a large proportion of the cars have to be moved from one yard to the other, and this is accomplished by transfer trains which are run over the main-line track connecting the yards. These
The three trains, the- running of which is charged to have been violative of the statute, were transfer trams of the class just described. They were run from one yard to the other on August 9, 1910, and were composed respectively of 42, 36 and 39 cars, of which only 9 in one train and 10 in each of the others had their air brakes connected for use by the engineer. At that time air brakes were required to be used on 75 per cent, of the cars in a train. 111. C. C. 429, 437.
Giving effect to the views quite recently expressed in
United States
v.
Erie Railroad Company, ante,
p. 402, we think these trains came within the air-brake requirement, which the amendatory-act of 1903 declares “shall be held to apply to all trains ... on any railroad engaged in interstate commerce.” According to the fair acceptation of the term they were trains in the sense of the statute. The work in which they were engaged was not shifting cars about in a yard or on isolated tracks devoted to switching operations, but moving traffic over a considerable stretch of main-line track — one that was a busy thoroughfare for interstate passengers and freight traffic. Every condition suggested by the letter and. spirit of the air-brake provision was present. And not only were these trains exposed to the hazards which that provision was intended to avoid or minimize, but unless their engineers were .able readily and quickly to check or control their movements they were a serious menace to the safety of other trains which the statute was equally de
The judgment of the Circuit Court of Appeals must therefore be reversed and that of the District Court affirmed.
It is so ordered.