I’ve been told that ‘operators’ carry shotguns & ‘whatnot’ & that we best be clear of the rails!
Although I fancy that Idea (& support it) I just don’t see it ‘in these times’ …
My other hobby is custom gunsmithing, & I have a big Mill, a Lathe, & TIG welder, the Mill has been essential in both hobbies! However, it has been HO oriented for a while now.
In my time living in suburban IL, a co-worker said RR’ders would shoot us if we had an emproach on their trackage, & I doubted that as I thought I was current on firearms laws. However, I am no expert on everything, & I knew there were crew changes somewhat often so I could see a crew covering a ‘permitted area’ so to speak.
I found the concept somewhat facinating, & in a way, hoped they did & do, -pack heat…
I’m sure in the ‘great days’ they surely did.
Depending on the area travelled, I’d love to give suggestions of what to carry, kinda gives the feeling of the ‘Ol West’ again or a good “Clint” movie…
So what is the ‘low down’ on armed trains???
In most States it is legal for employees on private property to carry firearms at the request of, or permission from, their employers. Example - every gun store I go in, all or most employees are wearing a side arm, even here in Maryland with relatively restrictive laws. I can carry my gun, open or concealed, on my own property, on on any other private property with the owners knowledge and permission. And, in my work as a construction manager, I have been given permission by properrty owners to carry my gun on their property at times when the property was unattended and we had repeated problems with breakin or vandels - both for my own safety as I checked on these properties located in remote areas after hours and as a hopeful deterent to the wrong doers.
The use of such firearms would be subject to conditions of fear for ones life or safety or the imminent safety of another person.
Some states have passed laws more clearly defining the rights of people to defend themselves and in some States the use of deadly force to defend property is sometimes justified. Many States also allow the carring of firearms almost anywhere in public, and/or issue concealed carry permits to any citizen in good legal standing. Several States with open carry laws also regard your automobile as an extension of your persnal property, and as such the keeping of a firearm in your car is no different than keeping one in your night stand.
That said, I don’t know of any train crews carring firearms and don’t think it is likley or likely to be allowed by modern railroads. Sounds like an urban myth.
But I do think returning the Constitutional right to defend ones self, family and property would go a long way in “ajusting” some bad behaviors in out present culture, or at least in protecting the rights and property of the honest people. And about 33 of the States think so too, especially Florida, Virgina, Texas and a few others.
Well, at one time he did, however I think he was ‘reaching’ back to the ‘golden’ days of steam, -but what do I know… However, we were on METRA tracks (ex MILW) in Elgin, IL. & from the public status in IL, I couldn’t see guns in trains in IL -‘At ALL!!!’ (But that was me, as a native of NE IA where guns were as common & like silverware when growing up…)
The only railroad people authorized to carry firearms on the railroad are the postal clerks on an RPO or special agents (railroad police). There haven’t been any RPO clerks since the late 1960’s.
All other employees are prohibited from carrying firearms while on duty or on company property.
They may be armed, but they are not supposed to be.
If railroad employees were shooting people right and left, don’t you think that somebody would have mentioned it or it might have made the evening news?
You either misunderstood what the person was telling you or they didn’t know what they were talking about or they were feeding you a line and you bit on it. Take your choice.
Well, there are certainly many stories of RR employees carrying firearms (usually small handguns) for self defence in crappy areas during the peak crime years (probably 1960s-1980s in the US).
However, the poster ‘Long Island Tool’, who is known to have worked on the LIRR, added some info in a RR.net thread here. I myself find it quite plausible that RR employees on the LIRR were allowed to carry during the high crime 1970s, and that a few employees are still allowed to do so. I could also believe that some employees might carry even if not allowed, chancing that they might not get caught (I would presume that penalties would be very high for getting busted) - have no idea how such an employee would explain away his weapon if it was fired in a self-defence situation (I also presume the employee would not wave his gun about if he just saw thieves breaking into, say, an intermodal trailer at a yard, but would rather call the police instead - no sense putting his career or life on the line for that) - but if some thugs are personally threatening you with harm…that’s a different story.
Then again, Tool may be full of it, but I’ll leave that to you guys to ‘trust but verify’.
BTW, I just remembered this is the ‘Prototype Info for Modelers’ forum - are you planning to stick scale handguns in the back of your model figures’ waistbands? Maybe a shotgun rack mounted on a SW1500?
When I work on the railroad we was not permitted to carry a weapon-including knives other then a legal pocket knife…The penalty was immediate dismissal without Union arbitration rights.
That part’s certainly not true. You can’t shoot someone merely for trespassing on your (or your employer’s) land. If you come home and find someone trying to jimmy open your door, and shoot them in the back, you’re going to be in trouble since it can’t reasonably be assumed that they were an immediate threat to you or your family. If someone were in the house, it’s a different story. Similarly, you can’t shoot someone who took a wrong turn on a hiking trail and wandered onto RR property.
If there isn’t a federal regulation against general RR employees being armed (i.e. all employees except RR Police) I’m sure virtually every state has a law against carrying a weapon while operating a public conveyance etc…plus as mentioned in earlier posts, most/all railroads rules would forbid it.
All of you put that very well articulated & understood…
I do believe the statement of the ‘Urban Myth’ & can totally see that from the ‘ding dong’ that made the original statement. When he said it, I immediately thought of steam days, & could see them with a trusty side by side, like I favor. Luckily in IA, just a few days ago during first deer season I was approched by DNR & my papers were in order & OK, & the windup was, I had a .500 handgun on my chest & a scoped 12ga across my arms, the DNR fella said to me ‘Good Luck Hunting!’ & I felt pretty good to be able to do that. I was the only one in the group that dual range firearms, & the “State” (DNR Fella) seemed to be OK with that getup. I hope that I can enjoy those freedoms for years to come.
Thanks for the input on the engineers & guns, I really think that was a ‘Golden Era’ steam engine days practice, when trains may have been hijacked & robbed tale, & that it has been embellished into modern times as a myth. I really can’t see Chi - Metra shooting at folks… REALLY???
Thanks for the comments!!! (sorry for the side-track)…
I’ve never come across any situation of a train crew carrying a firearm (except for RPO or express clerks) period, even in the ‘old west’ days. It’s possible a conductor might have had a pistol stowed in the caboose somewhere, but even that would be rare to nonexistant I’d wager.
I’m not a gun expert, but I would think having live ammunition around a steam engine’s open flame would be a bad idea?? Plus, it would be a hassle to wear a sidearm while shoveling coal I’d thnk.
I would think in the long run it would be safer for it to be known that engineers and firemen weren’t armed…train robbers would be less likely to shoot a train crew that they could be reasonably sure were unarmed.
Actually in the 1870-1888/1890s train crews out West did indeed carry fire arms…
You see most wanted to retain their scalp since the Plain Indians wasn’t above attacking or derailing a train…Funny the Apaches wouldn’t but,there was marauders and bandits that would.
Its a true saying next to his horse a Winchester or Henry rife was a man’s best friend West of the Mississippi…
I could see a rifle being kept somewhere in the cab or loco - not only for self-defense but for perhaps getting in a little hunting while stuck in a remote sidetrack - but not carrying six-shooters on the hip??
the last guy i knew on the railroad that had a gun with him all the time (other than the cops) was a Terminal Railroad switch tender that worked 3rd trick at Bridge Junction in E St Louis. he had a 22 rifle and a bunch of long rifle shells that had small diameter bird shot pellets instead of the conventional projectiles. this shot was hard on the rifling in the barrel but it was hell on the rats that crawled around his shanty in the dark.
this was back of the stock yards and grain elevators so there was no shortage of “game” to keep him occupied. in the rare event that the little beasts didn’t show up, he would bait them with table scraps he brought from home.
one night the block operator remarked that he had looked in the switch tender’s lunch sack and the poor guy was eating garbage. i pointed out that was not his lunch, it was his rat bait.
The author of Life on a Steam Locomotive reports that his father, a C&NW engineer and the subject of the book, carried a handgun in his satchel for personal self defense. He even recounted an incident in which his father pulled the gun on a shady character in a potentially dangerous situation. (The incident took place while the engineer was off-duty.) Time frame was in the early decades of the 20th century.
I don’t know much about the RR crews being armed other than the RR police forces, but I do know some things when it came to the Post Office employees being armed.
When my great-grandfather delivered mail from the 1910s to the early 1940s, he carried a shotgun in his wagon/sleigh and later his cars. He did this because he delivered hefty sums of cash to some very small town banks and farmers. His shotgun of choice was a .410. Before he retired, he drove a Model A Ford and would should at a piece of game out of the right window. He would then instruct one his children to jump out of the rumble seat and fetch that game and proceed to drive off to the next mailbox. That shotgun has been handed down through the years and now belongs to me.
It’s funny whenever I go shooting clays with friends that they prefer that old single shot shotgun over their fairly new, expensive, camo decorated guns.
I talked to my uncle who is a postmaster and he told me that any personnel who works for USPS who is armed are the Postal Inspectors.
Similarly to railroad employees, there’s a difference between Post Office / USPS employees who are “officially” armed vs. “unofficially” armed. When my Dad started working for the Post Office in 1943 one of his first jobs was being the nightwatch at the Minneapolis main Post Office armory, and also going to the Milwaukee and Great Northern depots to pick up mail. He remembered the RPO clerks all being armed, and being concerned about them shooting if something happened, since they all tended to develop shaky hands from years of RPO service. My Dad was armed when doing these pickups, usually with what he described as a “hand cannon”, a Spanish-American era pistol with a very long barrel.
Otherwise, I do believe Inspectors would be the only other armed employees. I may be wrong but I think when I was in training as a rural carrier 20 years ago they said we were not to carry weapons in our car or into the station (post office).