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In reaction to our New Haven report in October 1961 TRAINS, a reader mailed us this postscript. We think it makes for provocative, disturbing reading-and we think the questions it raises are deserving of answers. Quickly, too-EDITORS

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I THE New Haven analysis was of particular interest to me - not so much for what it was as for the questions it raised. To me, the real issue now is not "What went wrong?" but rather "What next?" During the development of the New Haven morass, I have been increasingly concerned over the insensitivity of almost everyone to its implications. Too many journalists (and your writer partially falls into this group) see the situation largely as a commuter crisis while regarding the rest of the railroad as a somewhat moth-eaten anachronism which no longer has much relevance to the territory it serves. And this view isn't confined to writers and reporters alone it is shared by politicians, the public (whatever that is), and even by the rest of the railroad industry.

But the New Haven is not a rapid-transit line alone, nor is it merely a multiple-track version of the Ontario & Western. It is an enterprise with assets of almost a half billion dollars and close to a rail monopoly in one of the country's most densely populated areas. Theoretically it should be handling the production and consumption of over 8.5 million people, in addition to carrying the people themselves. It lacks neither potential business nor capacity, yet its present position appears almost hopeless. What is happening to this company now and what happens to it in the future may very well be portents for the rest of the industry.

To be sure, part of the New Haven's predicament can be laid to a peculiar mishmash of mismanagement, misfortunes, and miscalculations which might be unique among railroads. But are the basic problems unique? Commuters and managerial meanderings aside, the fact that almost one quarter of the New Haven's freight business has vaporized in only five years should make anyone stop and think. All that distinguishes the New Haven from its neighbors is a matter of a few percentage points; the trend is the same. Even the affluent Western railroads can hardly rejoice for maintaining a relatively static traffic level in a prospering and growing territory. And this applies to all the New Haven's problems: passengers, taxes, rising operating costs, low labor productivity, shifting distribution patterns, inability to generate capital, and practically every other railroad woe. The New Haven is different only in that it happened to be hit the first and worst so far.

If we do believe that the New Haven's financial fix

IT NEXT?

is an advance warning of what may soon follow on a Pennsylvania or B&O, or perhaps even a UP or Santa Fe, then we must look at how this particular situation is being handled for a clue to what may happen in a larger crisis. Judging by the present course of events, the interested observer can do only one thing: reach for the Miltowns. For several things have become clear so far:

(1) The question of any further financial reorganization is academic as long as the railroad cannot even meet its operating expenses. To be feasible, any private reorganization must depend upon future earning power and it would appear that the New Haven has none in its present form.

(2) Despite an admittedly desperate and hopeless situation, nobody seems ready to take those measures which would remedy the basic problems. The reaction of everyone-management, Government, New Haven security holders, labor, the "public" - has been to patch, pray, and apparently hope that elves will appear and fix things some night. Expediency and avoidance of any major decision seem to be the guiding principles. Yet it is hardly fair to single out any one group from this collective inertia. Certainly nobody wants to give up his own vested interests, particularly if sacrifices are not forthcoming from anyone else. In sum, "public interest" is nothing more than the individual self-interest of its multiple parts. Worse yet, there seems to be sentiment that the sacrifices aren't worth it—that it may be "easier" simply to shift the whole tangle to some sort of subsidized setup and not change anything.

(3) Matching everyone else in apathy and inaction is the railroad industry itself. The New Haven -because of its nonexistent finances and dubious future has been conspicuously missing from any merger plans. What railroad or group of railroads has offered financial aid, better revenue divisions, managerial talent, or anything else? George Alpert's hat-in-hand trips to Washington were met with embarrassed silence or overt grumblings by other members of the industry. While such an attitude is certainly defensible on the grounds that no company dares jeopardize its own finances by throwing assets into the New Haven swamp, at the same time the industry cannot charge other groups with self-interest while excusing itself. The impression created may be a significant one to a public which already partially feels that railroads

as a group are not competent to help themselves. (4) The most interesting and significant question mark is the Federal Government. For the first time in recent railroad history the Government has a financial stake in the future of a major railroad - like it or not. It has, in fact, close to an ownership claim if it wishes to exercise it. What will this mean to the industry and to the Government? Now that Federal money is involved, will it mean any more enlightened governmental interest in railroad problems? How will the Government move to protect its loan guarantees? And if it does move, what precedent will this set if other railroads also pass the financial point of no return? So far, any answers to these questions might as well be got from a ouija board, for it is obvious that at this point nobody is philosophically ready to face the issue. It may be pertinent to point out here, however, that our present situation is developing disturbing similarities to that which forced the Canadian government to pick up a heap of prostrate, overbuilt and underfinanced companies and piece them together into the Canadian National system. Of course, in Canada the specific circumstances and the extent of government involvement were different, but the CN was the product of one basic problem: the railway lines could not attract private financing because they showed little or no practical promise of adequate earnings. The Canadian government was thus compelled to guarantee securities on a large scale, and when the inevitable collapse came there was no alternative but a 100 per cent public corporation which inherited almost all the financial problems and inefficiencies of the old corporations. Our own conditions and philosophy may differ from Canada's, but here too we are reaching the point where private sources will not provide necessary railway capital without some Government guarantee. Incidentally, it is significant to note that direct government ownership in Canada solved few problems; politics, vested interests, and general reluctance to change preserved most of the old inefficiencies almost to the present.

Now that I've raised the Monster Socialism, I'll retire from the discussion before the hardware starts flying. But I think one point bears repetition: the New Haven's predicament is not primarily the product of local or regional peculiarities. The road is a compact Pandora's box of railroad industry demons, but significantly, Hope seems to be missing. I

JERRY PINKEPANK

1 IN SOME elegant white build

ing down in Washington, D. C., the I.C.C. approved yet another short line abandonment. All in a day's work; short lines vanish almost every month of the year. For the solons of transportation this was routine business-just the stamp of approval on an examiner's report. But a thousand miles from Washington, in the north Michigan woods, the result of the decision was anything but routine. The East Jordan & Southern Railroad was quitting.

THIS wasn't the first time. Once before, in darkest 1932, EJ&S had had the I.C.C.'s approval to go out of business but there had been people willing to save the road and she hadn't been allowed to go under. Those people weren't around now.

The decision to keep running in 1932 was based on a virtually complete change in the road's purpose in life. Up through the 1920's EJ&S had been part of Michigan's once great network of logging lines, taking timber down to the East Jordan mill on Lake Charlevoix (pronounced Shar-ley-voy) from where it eventually departed as finished lumber aboard white-sailed schooners trading on the Great Lakes.

In the late 19th century the embryonic EJ&S was simply part of the operating economy of the East Jordan Lumber Company, but the thriving little community of East Jordan that had arisen around the mills was in need of transportation. The logging road was there, so why not use it? On July 9, 1901, the East Jordan & Southern Railroad Company was incorporated as a common carrier under the laws of Michigan. By October the little railroad was in full operation in its new role, doing business with 4 locomotives, 3 passenger cars, 7 flats, 2 service cars, and of course 112 log buggies. As this last item in the roster makes evident, lumbering was still the staff of life on the EJ&S. Nevertheless, by tying in with the old Pere Marquette 18 miles down the pike at Bellaire, this elaboration on a ogger gave East Jordan its needed connection with the world.

Over the line's entire 60-year exstence, the President and General Manager was an East Jordan Porter W. P. Porter at the beginning, later

succeeded by his son, H. P. Porter. When EJ&S went out of business three of the five stockholders were Porters.

Logging business boomed over the railroad's first decades. The 9 miles of branches with which the company began life grew to 30 miles of ramification by the late '20's. The logging car fleet topped 200. From time to time EJ&S would add or subtract an engine, but there were always four or five locomotives on the roster. And then the bottom fell out. The logs were gone — an old familiar tale wherever lumbermen had stripped the land without conservation. Northern Michigan is covered with the abandoned trails of little railroads that dried up in the resulting desert of stumps, and EJ&S seemed destined to join the parade. The 30 miles of branches of 1928 had become no branches at all two years later, and in 1932 EJ&S had its permission to cease running. Not enough traffic to warrant future operation, said the examiner.

That was when the EJ&S changed its purpose in life, for East Jordan rallied to save its railroad and new traffic came to the line to stave off starvation. The abandonment petition expired unused. EJ&S shed its fleet of logging cars and whittled down the motive power roster to the needs of its new mission, so that at the out

break of World War II the road was left with one Mogul and one Plymouth gas engine purchased from a Government dam project. A gas railbus replaced steam passenger service for a time, then was dropped in 1945. The line continued to serve as rail connection for the foundry and cannery that replaced lumbering in East Jordan's economy.

THE EJ&S might still have been just another short line except for one thing - excursions. Each year the East Jordan Chamber of Commerce sponsored free train rides as a tourist attraction on Independence Day and, if the natural display warranted in the tree-lined Jordan River valley, during the height of the fall color season. The jaunts down the somewhat doubtful 60-pound rail of the East Jordan & Southern to Bellaire and return drew the attention of newspaper feature sections and television cameras, which covered such events as "The Great Train Robbery" staged midway down the line by hard-ridin', pistolshootin' "outlaws."

The excursions often involved the road's entire roster of rolling stock two locomotives and two cars. There was Mogul No. 6, a 1909 Pittsburgh product preserved almost intact from construction with her high headlight,

long wooden pilot, Stephenson valve gear and slide valves, and swinging "church bell." Her normal duty was to stand by as EJ&S's "big engine" (all 58%1⁄2 tons' worth), backing up Plymouth ML 1, and to operate when the little gas engine was laid up for repairs or when there were simply too many cars for her to move. Then there was ML 1 herself (the initials stand for Motor Locomotive), no small showman by any means painted bright orange with black zebra stripes and sporting a big bell, an airoperated steam whistle, and vibrating a tall cast-iron stack with what was surely the unmuffled exhaust of her 175-horsepower engine in a sound which resembled five mainline freighters in the eighth notch. These

locomotives hauled: (1) the "Swan Car" (East Jordan likes to call attention to its Lake Charlevoix swans, and calls itself the Swan City) - a garish monstrosity consisting of open seats on one of the ancient short logging flats, covered by a red, white, and blue superstructure mounting swan cutouts on the sides; and (2) combine No. 2. This last car was a real treasure. The builder's plate, still mounted in the floor, read CHICAGO & GRAND TRUNK, FORT GRATIOT CAR SHOPS, 1889. C&GT was a Grand Trunk Western predecessor. The C&GT initials could still be seen on the car's threshold and trucks. Fort Gratiot car shops were at Port Huron, Mich., where GTW's car shops remain today.

Naturally this entourage did not

escape the attention of the fans, and in the last years it was a reasonably common event to charter the EJ&S for a day, tacking combine No. 2 onto some of the regular freight work and making the round trip from East Jordan to Bellaire behind the 2-6-0. Many an idyllic day was spent thus, following No. 6 down the line and back again, stopping for photo runs at such scenic places as Deer Creek trestle and the Jordan River bridge.

But no more, for on August 12, 1961, EJ&S ran its farewell fan trip. Operations ceased at the end of the month. Although there was talk of saving the Mogul and maybe the combine as well, the little railroad had, literally and figuratively, crossed over the Jordan for the last time. I