larger cities; the abundance of prestressed concrete ties; an increasing utilization of diesel-hydraulic switchers; 2-6-0's shunting in electrified zones beside the aforementioned diesels; 16-car M.U. suburban electric trains out of Toyko during rush hours; trolley cars of Toonerville vintage seen from bullet-nosed Kodama electric M.U. streamliners on Honshu; a pleasing array of JNR train colors; ancient and modern signaling methods; a scarcity of freight-only branch lines; and of course, the D51-class 2-8-2, still the most numerous of any locomotive type in the nation. CHINESE DEVELOPMENTS: Six new branch lines have been completed in southern and eastern Hopei Province in Red China. These total 165 miles and connect with the Peking-Canton and Peking-Shenyang main lines. . . . A new double-deck passenger train has been placed in service between Peking and Shenyang. Top speed of the 12-car consist is 84 mph. The builder: Szufang Rolling Stock Works of Tsingtao.... Chinese interest in railway modernization continues apace. Locomotive production (all types) is said to have risen from 85 units in 1955 to 650 in 1959 and 800 in 1960. In the same years railway car production rose from 6000 to 30,000 to 32,000. Looking westward policywise, the U. S. might well imitate the Red rails in the sunset!

BURMESE TICKET MACHINE: Most railways beyond the Pacific follow European ticketing methods. That is, a passenger pays his fare at the traditional window, has his ticket punched by a guard at the gate leading to the platform, and surrenders it to a similar official at his destination. To simplify this, the Japanese, for instance, have installed ticket vending machines. No more waiting in long lines if the right coin is at hand. Now Burma is considering a similar automatic machine. A 5-pya coin would bring forth a cardboard ticket, and line-waiting would be a thing of the past for local passengers. Requirement: the machine must have a dating cylinder mechanism and, if possible, an automatic time-stamping device.

HERE AND THERE: Down Under in New South Wales business is so good that older steamers are being called out of storage to cope with the traffic. If this continues, the 57- and 58-class 4-8-2's may be next to darken the skies. . . . Indian Railways has ordered 28 electric locomotives from three Japanese builders: Mitsubishi, Hitachi, and Toshiba.... Hard-pressed South Vietnam continues to modernize its railway system. Latest order: 10 third-class meter-gauge passenger cars from Commonwealth Engineering of Sydney, Australia.

SHORT LINES

WILLIAM S. YOUNG

GROWTH COMPANY?: The Canadian government is planning to build a 16.1-million-dollar, 57-mile railroad on the Gaspe Peninsula from Matane to Ste. Anne des Monts, Que., for operation by Canadian National. Connection with the rest of CN

would be over the 36-mile Canada & Gulf Terminal Railway. Canada & Gulf Terminal, which runs along the south shore of the St. Lawrence River from Matane to Mont Joli, is one of the last wholly independent short lines in Canada. (Most of the others are controlled by government, by Canadian National or Canadian Pacific, or by basic industries.) It has been owned by a syndicate of St. Lawrence Valley businessmen since 1947, still operates passenger service, and has one of the last pre-RDC railcars in Canada. A PLAN FOR THE MA & PA: About a year after the I.C.C. turned down its plea for abandonment in 1960 and ordered the line to continue for at least a year, Maryland & Pennsylvania Railroad (now a shadow of its former self) reported that it was making expenses and feeling hopeful. But recent figures show that the 38-mile York (Pa.)-Whiteford (Md.) short line lost money and experienced a further decline in tonnage during 1961. So now about 60 of Ma & Pa's shippers are talking seriously about setting up a new corporation to lease and operate the line. Meanwhile the present management is reported to be looking into the possibility of running steam-powered excursions as an added source of revenue. Ma & Pa, which was known for its classic steam power and its grass roots passenger service, now has just two diesels and operates for freight only.

TARBORO TO FARMVILLE: East Carolina Railway, 26-mile Atlantic Coast Line subsidiary operating from Tarboro to Farmville, N. C., has applied for abandonment. The agricultural road's petition to the I.C.C. says that it is "no longer needed in common-carrier service."

SLIMMING THE SUSQUEHANNA: The recent abandonment of Lehigh & New England Railroad has cleared the way for New York, Susquehanna & Western Railroad to lop off more unproductive trackage. Susquehanna plans to abandon 26 miles of main line in western New Jersey from Hainesburg Junction to Sparta Junction. A portion of the line was used by L&NE trains en route to Maybrook, N. Y. Susquehanna will thus slim down to 60 miles of owned main line, from Sparta Junction, where it connects with Lehigh & Hudson River Railway, to Croxton Yard, Jersey City. The line to Hainesburg Junction, where Susquehanna exchanged cars with L&NE in the shadow of the Lackawanna Cutoff's Paulins Kill Viaduct, was a remnant of the historic route through the Delaware Water Gap to Stroudsburg and, via the long-abandoned Wilkes-Barre & Eastern, to Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

GANANOQUE GLEANINGS: No. 500, one of Canada's oldest diesels, was recently replaced on the 5-mile run of Thousand Islands Railway between Gananoque and Gananoque Junction, Ont., by a Canadian National road-switcher. The 500, which was converted from an Oshawa Railway electric locomotive in 1930, is presently on loan to Canada Starch Company at Cardinal, Ont., as a plant switcher. The town of Gananoque, familiar to thousands who have visited the Thousand Islands region, no longer has passenger service. Thousand Islands Railway, a CN subsidiary, dropped its last passenger run early this year. I

Editor aboard U25B

ONE of our favorite places

is the Erie (Pa.) Works of General Electric. We first went there back in 1949 to see the old 101 - prototype of the 25 4500 h.p. gas turbineelectrics which UP later bought. On a much later visit Universalmodel exports packed the erection floor, so we were surprised to glimpse in one corner a pair of V-16 engines - engines too large for any overseas customer to specify. GE was mum, for the U25B, for which the large power plants were tabbed, was still a hush-hush project. Once the censorship was lifted in 1959 we pegged the 2500 h.p. B-B for a feature. Subsequent research included a demonstration run on the Soo and a return visit to Erie. Now we wouldn't mind visiting Erie again; who knows what's new there today? Surely something that would, granted enough time and travel, give us the makings of another manuscript for TRAINS, the magazine of railroading.

I

IN the mounting skepticism with which London's internationally circulated Diesel Railway Traction views American locomotive practice, perhaps the cruelest adjective hurled in our direction is "conventional." Its editors deplore the power-to-weight ratios, axle loadings, and adhesive characteristics of our domestic diesels as well as what they consider to be the culprits: slow-speed engines and electric transmissions. In its 1962 annual review number, the overseas trade press dismissed all three U. S. bestsellers Alco's DL-640, EMD's GP30, and GE's U25B- as "no more than conventional advances on conventional existing locomotives; that is, they are near the top of the parabolic curve of conventional diesel-electric locomotive development, where each 1 per cent of advance needs inordinate effort and expense." Europe's "quickrunning" diesel engines (i.e., rated at 1400 r.p.m. and up vs. a maximum of about 1000 r.p.m. here) and hydraulic final drives are, of course, what warm the editorial heart of Diesel Railway Traction. Accordingly, the magazine contends that the influence of the six Krauss-Maffei imports now riding the rosters of Rio Grande and Espee "can hardly be other than great," and granted, progress reports to date from the West coincide with, rather than contradict, this outlook.

The domestic diesel most vulnerable to the editorial barbs of Diesel Railway Traction is, hands down, the U25B, for whereas the competition's hoods are products of evolution predicated upon components used in earlier models, the General Electric machine

was designed from scratch by people who possessed no obligations to the past. GE's Locomotive & Car Department at Erie, Pa., set out to build a "more powerful and yet simpler" unit than anything on the market, a locomotive so good that its economic pluses would be "easily demonstrable and readily appreciated by the railroads." Systems Engineer John C. Aydelott's design team established only two ground rules for their diesel: "It must not be simply a 'me too' locomotive. At the same time it would not incorporate changes merely for the sake of change." Thus in full knowledge of European trends and with no commitments to existing American practice, Aydelott assembled what at first blush seems to be orthodoxy itself, only more powerful-a "simpler" rather than a complex unit in its physical layout and one devoid of either a nonelectric drive or a "quickrunning" engine. If U. S. diesel-electrics, per se, are essentially obsolescent, then so is the U25B. But if the U. S. unit (a 4-axle, 4-motor hood powered by a single, sturdy if slowspeed engine) is valid, then the U25B may be its best example to date.

THE U25B's clean lines, free of protruding grids, fans, or air intakes, reveal its planned inner simplicity, for assuming power output would equal or surpass that of rival makes, low maintenance was the locomotive's prime design consideration. In 1959, for instance, it cost Class 1 railroads 1.4 billion dollars in operating expense to run their locomotives. Of that amount, 28.7 per cent was ac