Old thread, but I'm curious what the resolution was.
Let me tell a little story. A recent one from my years in emergency services.
911 is called because somebody sees a bomb on the railroad tracks. We (as the county emergency responders) block the tracks and call the railroad.
Not 5 minutes later, in the middle of rural Wyoming, a railroad officer arrives. He walks over to the "bomb", looks at it for a bit, then picks it up and throws it in the back of his truck.He drives it a few hundred yards off the track, drops it on the ground and comes back to us.
When asked about disposal, he states that it is none of our concern and dismisses us. The device was on railroad property and nothing we could do about it.
Further digging revealed the power these officers have. First off, they are considered federal agents that can cross any state line or other boundary in the U.S. as long as they are on railroad property. Most are retired military and go through a background check and training academy that rival the FBI or CIA.
With a very few exceptions, they are exempt from most federal laws when it comes to radio (FCC), ATF, DOJ. If they want to detonate tons of explosives on their property, as long as it stays on their property, they can go nuts. They are given their own radio frequency allocation, unlike any other private industry, that is exempt from most of the laws that hinder others.
If you are on their property and they catch you, they can and will take darn near whatever action they feel is necessary. They are almost always heavily armed.
Do not EVER mess around on railroad property. If you catch a bull on a bad day, you will pay dearly. Is it stupid? Oh yes, but you have to look back at the railroad tycoons of the past. Extremely powerful men who could write their own laws. Then during the the course of evolution, railroads have been declared critical infrastructure by the DOD/FEMA/DHS. Don't expect it to change anytime soon.
WM
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