So the county resolution vacated a road interest. Counties do it all the time. It doesn’t touch a rail corridor, and it never could. He was almost smiling. “She didn’t beat us in that courtroom, Porter. She got us to fight her in a building where nobody was allowed to answer the actual question.”
Then he gave me the half that mattered. Fern Hollow is a common carrier. That’s not a courtesy. It’s an obligation on an active line. They’re required to serve the shippers on it. Right now, they’re not serving you because your track is obstructed. He let it sit. Which makes the obstruction the association’s problem, not yours. Meaning what? Meaning we stop asking a judge for permission, and start telling a railroad what its duty is.
We filed the full records request that same week. Everything in the state rail division inquiry file. Incoming and outgoing, all attachments. Then I drove ninety minutes to the FH&S offices, and sat across from Burn Hollister, the general manager. A heavy man with a fifty-year-old track chart on the wall behind him.
I put the operating agreement on his desk, the milepost schedule on top of it, and the state letter on top of that turned so he could read the clause. He read it, then read it again with his thumb on it the way I had. North of 3.2. My crossing is at 4.1. Hollister sat back and looked at the ceiling a while. “We embargoed you off a county resolution and a letter about somebody else’s track. That’s going to be an interesting memo.” “I’m not looking for a memo. I’m looking for cars. Forty of them before May first or I’m done.”
He called his general counsel and I heard one side of eleven minutes and twice he said the words common carrier obligation in a tone I would not have wanted aimed at me. Then he hung up and pulled a calendar toward him. “We lift the embargo conditional on the obstruction being cleared. I’ll put a service restoration run on the schedule. Light train, twelve loads coming back off your loadout.” He tapped a date. “April twenty-first, depart the interchange 5:50, hit your crossing right around 6:00 in the morning. That’s the first slot I’ve got with a crew and power.”
April twenty-first. I looked at that date on his calendar and felt the floor tilt. And I didn’t say anything for a second because a small, ugly, honest part of me wanted to say nothing at all and let the morning arrive. I told him about the dedication. Ten a.m. same day. Two hundred guests. Hollister didn’t blink. “Then they’ve got until the fourteenth to get their columns out of my railroad.”
The railroad’s notice went out that afternoon. And this one didn’t go to a PO box. Certified to the association, the management company, every board member at their home address and to Karen Brantley twice. Remove all obstructions from the Pennington siding crossing on or before April fourteenth or FH&S maintenance forces would enter and remove them.