LEST enthusiasm run riot over the transportation message President ennedy sent to the 87th Congress on pril 5, 1962, let us preface any discuson of its virtues and chances with these ard facts: Transportation is the last em in the President's domestic proram, not the first; accordingly it reaches ongress in the last session and just beore that body adjourns to go home to reair political fences in anticipation of all elections. Of course, his staff conends that Kennedy was the first Presient to submit a major message on transort and since it is likely, even by Cepublican guessing, that he will be in Washington for many years, so will his pinion on transport.

Trouble is, as Arthur Krock observes n the New York Times, the railroads annot afford to wait for legislative reorm processed with simply "deliberate peed."

Nevertheless, the Kennedy message is Extraordinarily sound, even — considerng the opposition — courageous. Its key rovision would free the rails of I.C.C. ontrol over minimum rates on bulk ommodities as well as agricultural comodities which now are exempt from egulation when moved by private truck nd barge operators. Either that, says the message, or regulate all carriers' rates nd equalize the present inequities that vay. Another ratemaking provision of he message would be a directive to reguatory agencies to sanction "experimenal" freight rates - a move clearly deigned to loosen the vise in which the C.C. has placed the rails' guaranteed nd agreed charges, multiple-car or inentive rates, and other bids to exercise heir inherent economy. Still, there is ittle in the message to excuse the bleatng of truck and water carriers which it mmediately provoked. Nowhere, for exmple, did the President specifically reer to the railroad dilemma as such. He id not recommend a Department of 'ransportation to co-ordinate all Federal ransport policies and regulation, as his redecessor urged. Nor did he mention uch a cherished rail objective as the ight to diversify into nonrail transportaion. But he repeated earlier requests or mild user-charges on commercial airines and inland waterways, and made utsized headlines next day with passener proposals to drop minimum intertate fare regulation and initiate a longange program of Federal aid for urban nass transportation. And he neatly tepped into two opposition camps at nce by urging that rail piggyback Plans II and IV (under which the shipper proides the trailers or trailers and flat ar) be made available to truckers as well

as to shippers and freight forwarders. As for mergers, the President announced appointment of his own executive department advisory group to study both rail and airline consolidation plans on a caseby-case basis; he did not agree to demands, notably union, that the I.C.C.'s authority to approve mergers be indefinitely suspended.

Aside from its key ratemaking recommendations, the President's message is perhaps most notable for the way in which, without apology, it calls a spade a spade. For example

"The users of the waterways include some of the largest and financially strongest corporations in the United States today, and it is surely feasible and appropriate for them to pay a small share of the Federal Government's cost in providing and maintaining waterway improvements."

"Some carriers are required to provide, at a loss, services for which there is little demand. Some carriers are required to charge rates which are high in relation to cost in order to shelter competing carriers. . . . Some carriers are subject to rate regulation on the transportation of particular commodities while other carriers, competing for the same traffic, are exempt."

"No simple Federal solution can end the problems of any particular company or mode of transportation. On the contrary, I am convinced that less Federal regulation and subsidization is in the long run a prime requisite of a healthy intercity transportation network."

"The difficulty and the complexity of these basic troubles will not correct themselves with the mere passage of time. On the contrary, we cannot afford to delay further. Facing up to the realities of the situation, we must begin to make the painful decisions necessary to providing the transportation system required by the United States of today and tomorrow."

"Painful decisions" they will be, too, for our elected representatives in view of the enormous lobby pressure which the road and water competition will bring to bear upon them to confound the President's intentions. Quite obviously now is the time for all of us concerned with railroading to address our representatives and senators, briefly and respectfully and frankly, assuring them of our unswerving support of the President's transportation recommendations and of those who vote for them.

We can no longer write off the railroad debacle on grounds that the man in the White House doesn't give a damn. His message proclaims he does. The least he can expect of those who proclaim themselves concerned - you and

SOME 14 years ago we began compiling a contemporary and continuing chronology of the U. S. locomotive in an annual motive power survey. On the occasion of its latest edition (pages 26-30) we took a look at the first an article called "The Shift From Steam" in April 1949 TRAINS devoted to the engine news of 1948. That year the industry ordered 3.4 million diesel horsepower (including many a unit now up for replacement); C&O, L&N, NKP, and N&W ordered 69 steam engines (including the last domestic steam production of both Baldwin and Lima); it didn't look to us as if Chessie would buy any more steam turbine-electrics, but N&W seemed interested in one; and we called it all "The Age of the F3."

Kalmbach Publishing Co. 1962. Title reg. Pat. Off. Published monthly by Kalmbach Publishing Co., 1027 N. 7th St., Milwaukee 3. Wis., U.S.A. BRoadway 2-2060, Western Union and cable address: KALPUB Milwaukee. A. C. Kalmbach, President. Joseph C. O'Hearn, General Sales Manager. Ward Zimmer, Advertising Manager. TRAINS assumes no responsibility for the safe return of unsolicited editorial material. Acceptable photographs are held in files and are paid for upon publication. Second-class postage paid at Milwaukee, Wis. Printed in U.S.A. YEARLY SUBSCRIPTION, $6; 2 YEARS. $11; 3 YEARS, $15. For life. $60 Outside the Americas. 50 cents a year additional (for life, $5 additional).

Everybody likes N&W

As the Eastern merger mixup gradually shakes down to three basic systems (NYC+PRR, C&O+B&O, N&W+NKP+ Wabash) the Uninvited are making themselves heard. To get Erie-Lackawanna off his back, President Stuart T. Saunders of Norfolk & Western, most profitable of all the merger-minded roads and the choice of all the left-outs, had to promise an "attempt" to find some sort of affiliation, even though he ruled out outright merger with EL. Subject to I.C.C. approval, he further agreed to purchase Akron, Canton & Youngstown and to lease Pittsburgh & West Virginia for 99 years. Now guess who's knocking on the door? Delaware & Hudson and Boston & Maine. D&H, which originally thought of merging with Erie and Lackawanna and

- as the healthiest of the trio - thought better of it, made its intentions clear in its 1961 annual report - and B&M quickly added "Amen." D&H might make it to the wedding, but B&M is strictly New England and many railroaders think all of the roads in that region should consolidate into one property which then might be controlled three ways by the Eastern lines. Trouble is, the New England roads considered merger, but relatively well roads such as Bangor & Aroostook could not stomach the debt of soon-to-be-bankrupt New Haven (which now says it must merge or die), so the deal fell through.

Tune in next month, same station.

The fight for coal

Coal and railroading go together like a pair of automatic couplers. The mine requires low-cost mass transportation to market its product; such a bulk commodity moving in vast volume (and free of the lading protection and speed necessary to hold higher-rated traffic) constitutes ideal rail traffic. Once upon a time Pennsylvania anthracite alone virtually created a colony of multiple-track

blue-chip roads such as D&H, Jers Central, Lackawanna, Lehigh Valley, Reading. But anthracite was large consumed in home furnaces, and wher oil and gas cut into this market, rains borne anthracite skidded from more than 115 million tons in 1948 to just 31.1 m lion tons by 1959. The fortunes of th hard coal haulers dwindled in reaction Bituminous coal production, though its pace of the 1920's, has neverthele held up reasonably well as losses in ho and locomotive consumption have bee somewhat offset by gains in export as well as in electrical generating plant fu Bituminous coal accounts for approxi mately 25 per cent of total railroad ton nage and 12 per cent of revenues. Eve with coal, though, the rails now find themselves vulnerable to competition There is growing talk of transporting coal by "wire" (i.e., locating generating plants at the minehead and using long-distance transmission lines to carry electricity and the backers of a "slurry" (half coal half water) pipeline recently received endorsement of their bid for the right of eminent domain from not only the State of West Virginia but also from President Kennedy himself.

The rails are not sitting on their pants Eastern roads are sponsoring an engi neering study of a 25,000-ton-capacity "integral" train with semipermanently coupled cars and spliced throughout the consist by diesel units. The idea is that vast tonnages could be sped from mine to consumer without intermediate yarding and with such quick turnarounds as to lower the rails' costs and rates. Indeed, both Central and Pennsy are anticipating the integral train with prototypes made up of conventional equipment. PRR is creating 6000-ton-capacity diesel-powered trains of large gondolas to move coal from an Indiana County mine in western Pennsylvania to the Martins Creek plant of Pennsylvania Power & Light, the state's largest electrical producer. Because the train can be loaded in 3 hours, won't be switched en route, and will remain in this captive shuttle service, the railroad contemplates cutting its

rate per ton by $1.04 under the present :emporary rate and $1.26 under the standard rate. NYC is running a similar test between western Pennsylvania and the Bergen plant of New Jersey Public Service Electric & Gas. The first train in this new "express-shuttle" service was made up of 120 70-ton hoppers; carried 8400 tons of coal; ran 700 miles without assembling, switching, and yard classification. Said President Perlman, his road, given the same contract guarantees that a pipeline operator would require, could do the same job more efficiently and at less cost.

Down in Kentucky, Louisville & Nashville recently built or bought three experimental 100-ton hoppers equipped for nonstop, automatic unloading (in less than 30 seconds per car), and as a result is now buying a train of 100 such cars. Moving as a unit from a U. S. Steel mine at Lynch, Ky., to the firm's washer at Corbin, 94.5 miles, the 100 cars will carry 10,000 tons of coal in one day - a job that presently requires three days and 600 conventional 50-ton hoppers. Farther South, in Alabama, Southern went after new coal business for a power plant at Wilsonville, Ala., by buying huge but lightweight aluminum gons that can haul 112 tons per car, then keeping them in a captive shuttle service between mine and a rotary dumper at Wilsonville that allows 174 such cars to do the job of 870 ordinary hoppers.

Pennsy President Allen J. Greenough calls such trains "flexible fuel lines on rails," and hopes they will "sound the death knell to the grandiose plans being made in some quarters to take almost half the rails' coal business away from them."

No more varnish for B&O?

Five years ago President Howard E. Simpson of Baltimore & Ohio made it clear where his road stood on the passenger question: "I remind you that our railroad sold the very first railroad ticket to a passenger for the sum of 12 cents. And we will continue to sell tickets to passengers - come hell or high water!even if the utterly fantastic and impossible situation should be reached that we should not only be the first, but the last!" What no one could foresee was the astonishing speed with which the country's oldest common carrier would slip rom grace. In 1956 B&O grossed 465.5 nillion dollars to produce a pretax net of 34.9 million, a considerably better perormance than much larger Central and Pennsy. But last year ailing B&O took n just 351.4 million dollars and posted a 1.1 million deficit, worst in its 135-year history. Today President Jervis Langdon wonders if his road can pick up the tab or even a skeletonized mainline passenger ervice. In 1958 B&O dropped its Washngton-New York Royal Blue Line servce; went on to abandon service into Louisville, Ky., and Wheeling, W. Va.; liminated the Diplomat on the St. Louis un; and combined three limiteds - the 11-coach Columbian, the all-Pullman Capitol Limited, and the Ambassador (a Detroit train, consolidated east of Wilard, O.) into one. But even these conomies, together with incentive fare Continued on page 13