§ 17.093.Service on Foreign Railway

The last section of the chapter, and its two routes are drawn with unusual specificity.

In addition to other methods of service provided by law, process may be served on a foreign railway by serving one of two people.

The first is a train conductor who handles trains for two or more railway corporations, at least one being the foreign corporation and at least one a domestic corporation, and handles those trains over tracks that cross the state's boundary and on tracks of a domestic corporation within this state.

Both conditions are required. The provision describes a conductor who works for the foreign railway and a Texas railway and whose route physically crosses into Texas — someone connected to both the defendant and this state.

The second is an agent who has an office in this state and sells tickets or makes contracts for the transportation of passengers or property over all or part of the foreign railway's line. A commercial presence, doing the railway's business here.

The section descends from an era when interstate railways were the principal out-of-state defendants with Texas operations, and when the general long-arm statute did not yet exist. It remains available, and the opening words preserve every other method alongside it.