Training of the Guard

By Zachary Reger

The inaugural journey of the Capitol Express met with resounding success. Passengers young and old, of high class and low, flocked to travel by train. The newly efficient route—with a faster engine and fewer stoppages—cut nearly three-quarters of an hour from the intercity trek. A solid foundation laid, the future of the Capitol Express seemed secure, at least insofar as concerned its corporate parent, the Capitol Railway Company.

The second journey, however, encountered one momentary hitch. Having been delayed by freight traffic down-route, the Express was unable to complete its trip by sundown, as scheduled. Lacking suitable sleeping arrangements through the night hours (for the daytime Express had no need of sleeping compartments), a few daring passengers co-opted the lounge, turning its narrow, padded booths into makeshift bedding.

Although the crew approved, the corporate brass was irate. “Passengers cannot sleep in those booths,” remarked the Company’s chief counsel. “Each booth is large enough for a person to lie prone, but it lacks the sort of safety guardrails found on a bed in a traditional sleeping compartment. What if a passenger takes a mid-sleep tumble onto the floor? Any injury could prove a liability to the Company.

“From now on,” the chief counsel declared, “should the Express fail to timely conclude its route, the crew shall instruct passengers to sleep only in their assigned seats—never in the lounge. We will build this rule into the terms of each and every ticket sold for travel on the Express. We will build it into the terms of each and every contract for employment on the rail line. And we will post the rule in a conspicuous place so that everyone will know exactly what it says.”

And so an official rule was promulgated, and it was so built into the terms of passengership and employment. As posted on a placard in the lounge car of the Express, the rule read as follows: “Passengers may not sleep in the lounge car.”

The remainder of the traveling season proceeded with nary a concern. Indeed, the Capitol Express did not again fail to complete its route by sundown. Though the rule remained, it lingered unenforced until the fifth daily voyage of the Express’s third year.

Eddie Dunforth, conductor third-class of the Express, had a terrible temper. Earlier that week, a business partner of Eddie’s had absconded with $7,500 in cash—the start-up funds for Eddie’s latest get-rich-quick scheme. To make matters worse for dear Eddie, his Boston terrier, Pepper, had also absconded after gnawing through her leash while her owner was away. Poor Eddie searched and searched, but Pepper never came home. Luckless and alone, Eddie was left with an empty wallet and a heavy heart.

And so it came that when Eddie Dunforth, conductor third-class, discovered a passenger dozing off in one of the large, leather armchairs of the Capitol Express lounge, Eddie chose that moment to resurrect l’ancienne règle.

“Sir,” said Eddie, tapping the passenger’s shoulder with a conductor’s baton. “Sir, you can’t sleep here. There is no sleeping in the lounge.”

“What?” asked the groggy passenger, stumbling awake. “Why can’t I sleep here?”

Eddie pointed to the placard. “I’m afraid I don’t make the rules. It’s just how it is, chum.”

“Harumph. Fine, then,” the passenger gruffed. “If this is the type of service a gentleman receives while riding the Capitol Express, next time I’ll take my business to a better railway.”

That passenger, as Eddie Dunforth was unfortunate enough to discover, was none other than William McMann II, elderly father of William McMann III, reigning chief executive officer of the Capitol Railway Company.

McMann, Sr., promptly complained to McMann, Jr., and Eddie Dunforth, conductor third-class of the Capitol Express, promptly became Eddie Dunforth, former conductor third-class of the Capitol Express.

Oh, poor Eddie.

Of course, the rule had to be rewritten. The legal minds of the Capitol Railway Company met to discuss the issue. The chief counsel who had drafted the original rule had long since left the Company for a higher-paying position at General Motors. And so it was left to a stock of greenhorn attorneys to fashion a better standard.

“May we eliminate the rule entirely?” asked one attorney. “The Capitol Express has missed its sundown terminus but once in a nearly three-year term. Perhaps the rule has outlived its purpose.”

“No, no,” interjected a second attorney. “The general idea of the rule must stay. Once it goes, a passenger is bound to get injured. Fashioning a protective rule and subsequently discarding it would play worse in court than never having considered the matter to begin with. We must think in the long-term interests of the Company.”

“I agree,” said a third attorney. “How about an updated rule, one better tailored to the specific danger we seek to prevent? We need not prohibit all sleeping in the lounge—merely sleeping that occurs in the prone, unguarded booths.”

And so a new rule was promulgated. As posted on a placard in the lounge car of the Express, the rule read as follows: “Passengers may not sleep in any booth in the lounge car.”

Like its predecessor, the rule wouldn’t last. During the seventh month of the Express’s fifth year, a group of college freshmen, on their way home for the holidays, made sure to flex their newly acquired reading comprehension.

“We can’t sleep in the booths,” one student said, inspecting the placard. “But what about on the floor?”

“You’re right!” exclaimed her friend. “It’s the dead of winter, and there’s hardly anyone on the train. Who is going to care? I have a few blankets in my suitcase. Let’s drape them over these armchairs and make a fort.”

Upon hearing the news, the railway attorneys knew that they couldn’t let a bit of innocent fun go unpunished. Certainly not. “Sleeping on the floor is unsanitary,” said one. “What if a passenger gets sick?”

“Worse still,” said another attorney, “what if a passenger on the floor is stepped upon? Or what if a blanket fort causes a passenger walking by to trip and fall?”

“Blanket forts are a hazard,” said a third attorney, nodding. “And so is sleeping on the floor. We must update the rule to prevent this from happening again.”

And so a new rule was promulgated. As posted on a placard in the lounge car of the Express, the rule read as follows: “Passengers may not sleep in any booth or upon any other surface in the lounge car. Nor may passengers construct makeshift bedding for such purpose.”

But students, as any educator knows, are not so easily thwarted. Two weeks later, the same group, making their way back to campus, saw the updated placard in the lounge car.

“Was this change really made because of us?” one student asked.

“They didn’t even update the rule correctly,” said another. “We never used the blanket fort for the purpose of sleeping.”

And so the Capitol Express Blanket Fort Mark II was constructed. Our brave troublemakers saw not a wink of sleep on their railway journey, and the railway attorneys had another rule to promulgate.

By the time of the Capitol Express’s twelfth year, things had gotten quite out of hand. The rule had been updated on nearly two dozen occasions, each time to incorporate a specific instance of liability-producing conduct.

The economic situation only made matters worse. During the post-war shift, railways across the country lost more and more business to the automakers, and turnover in the Capitol Railway Company’s legal department increased. With each round of regulatory revisions, the railway attorneys were tasked with making sense of the often bizarre promulgations of their predecessors, who, more often than not, were no longer available to shed light on the intent and purpose of the various provisions.

As the brightest legal minds absconded, leaving the Company like rats on a sinking ship—or like Pepper from her owner, Eddie Dunforth—regulatory meetings became more obsequious to the supposed wisdom of the dead hand.

“Why don’t we clean this up?” asked one junior attorney at such a meeting. “If we simplify the rule, it will make more sense to everyone.”

“We can’t strike these provisions!” declared another, slightly less junior, attorney. “Why, we know full-well that each and every clause was added for a specific purpose. Our reasoned judgment can only hold a candle to the great mass of practical experience of our predecessors. We may not understand the precise goal of each provision, but we know that our forebears saw a specific problem and fashioned a specific solution to correct it. If we depart from their carefully constructed language, we merely relitigate the very issues that have long since been considered and satisfactorily resolved.”

And so the leviathan grew.

On the day that the Capitol Railway Company declared bankruptcy, nearly fifteen years since the maiden voyage of the Capitol Express, the placard in the lounge car read as follows:

“An individual may not lie in any booth or upon any other flat surface in the lounge car. Nor may an individual construct any device or mechanism for such purpose, provided that an individual with a medical condition requiring the individual to so lie shall be permitted to so lie and to construct a device or mechanism for such purpose, provided further that such device or mechanism, in the determination of the conductor or the conductor’s assigned representative, does not constitute an undue hindrance to the enjoyment of the lounge car by other individuals. An individual failing to comply with this rule, in the case of an individual that is a passenger, not an on-duty employee or contractor of the Capitol Railway Company, shall be subject to immediate revocation of his or her ticket, without reimbursement, and may be asked, and if necessary, forced, to leave the train at the next station stop; and in the case of any other individual, shall be subject to any appropriate professional sanction, up to and including termination of employment or contract and a withholding of salary, wages, or any amount due under such contract. An individual who believes that he or she has been wrongly punished under this rule may submit an appeal to the administrative appeals board of the Capitol Railway Company, provided that such appeal is so submitted not later than sixty days after the date of the alleged wrongful punishment.”

The assets of the now-defunct Capitol Railway Company were absorbed into the much larger National Railway Company, which ran nearly ten times as many routes with just as many passengers. 

At first, the Capitol Express was shuttered. Given time, the decisionmakers at the National Railway Company saw that the former Capitol Express route showed promise as a mid-budget project—one that may even spark a bit of nostalgia for the older days of travel by train among a certain set of customers.

The Capitol Express was reimagined as the National Express. The route and timetables were much the same, but with a few minor tweaks. For one, the Express would now run only three times per week as opposed to once daily. This cost-cutting measure would increase efficiency and boost profits, or so the Company believed. For another, the Express would run a slightly faster route, ditching a few inconvenient stops at smaller towns in between the major metropolises of each terminus. Train travel was an increasingly urban phenomenon, and rural stops hung like a cash-devouring albatross around the railway’s neck. Or so the Company believed.

As the National Railway Company prepared to relaunch the Express, the old “lounge car” rule, utterly incomprehensible as it had become, was summarily discarded.

“I’ve heard about this rule,” one railway attorney remarked at a restructuring meeting. “Those poor saps had no idea what they were doing. The ‘lounge car’ rule is simply what happens when you put a rotating cast of junior attorneys on a continuous project, all deathly afraid of making any change, no matter how necessary such change may be. The rule has to go.”

And so it went. The lounge car of the National Express would have no prohibition on sleeping. 

By all accounts, ditching the old rule seemed like an excellent decision. The inaugural journey of the National Express met with resounding success, and passengers young and old, of high class and low, flocked to travel by train on a newly efficient route with a faster engine and fewer stoppages.

A solid foundation laid, the future of the National Express seemed secure.

Zachary Reger is an attorney in Washington, D.C., where he writes laws and other things. As an avid rail fan, he can often be found on one of Amtrak’s many cross-country routes. “Training of the Guard” was written during one such trip, aboard the Southwest Chief and the now-defunct Capitol Limited. He is happy to report that on such trip he was not, and never has been, kicked out of the lounge car.