Fifty more General Motors 2000-hp GP-20's are joining the Santa Fe fleet of twentyfive GP-20's at work pulling the freights between Chicago and Kansas City. By turning in fifty 1350-hp freight locomotives, the Santa Fe is exchanging 67,500-hp capacity for 100,000-hp-a gain of 48%. This added capacity enables the fifty new GP-20's to do the work of seventy-four older FT's.

This is the essence of the General Motors Locomotive Replacement Plan.

LA GRANGE, ILLINOIS • HOME OF THE DIESEL LOCOMOTIVE
In Canada: General Motors Diesel, Limited, London, Ontario

ON THE WAY to National Railroad Museum at Green Bay, Wis., Big Boy 4017 was towed near Omaha by an 8500 h.p. gas-turbine June 16.

ARRIVALS & DEPARTURES

BIG TRADE-IN: Missouri Pacific is turning in 75 5-to-13-year-old 1500 h.p. units with a check for approximately 9 million dollars to Electro-Motive in return for 50 new GP18 roadswitchers (Mopac acquired 24 GP18's in 1960). Deliveries start in January. PIGGYBACK: Baltimore & Ohio is road-testing that German-built triple-unit articulated double-decker "AutoPorter" flat imported by North American Car. The 122-foot car, whose deck is 13 inches lower than on ordinary flats, can carry 16 compact or 12 standard automobiles, boasts loading costs of less than $1 per car. B&O says fears that 2wheel trucks and articulation might jackknife car in heavy freights with helpers in mountain territory proved unfounded. Trucks are yelling over trilevel freight-car transport of automobiles which Eastern roads planned to introduce between Michigan, Ohio, and the East and New England last September. They claim rates would be $20 to $40 per car below present truck rates. We shouldn't wonder. . . . After recent successful tests, Santa Fe will soon be moving mail from Chicago and Kansas City to the Bay Area in 8x8x20-foot containers on special flats cut into the San Francisco Chief. MARKET PREDICTION: Expressway stalemate will produce more than a billion dollars' worth of orders for 9000 new subway and commuter cars over the next 10 years, predicts Pullman-Standard veep Thomas C. Gray. QUOTABLE STATISTIC: Original Union Pacific transcontinental line from Omaha to Promontory Point, Utah, cost $59,166,272. Today UP spends $26,300,000 a year just to maintain its 9725-mile system. ARGUMENT: In the C&O-B&O control case, Chessie has refuted Central's claim that NYC loses money on operations east of Buffalo. Not so, says C&O; only the New York district from Albany, N. Y., south loses anything. The coal-hauler also claims that Central credits its western region with all revenues on Chicago-Buffalo (or vice versa) hauls but charges the eastern end with terminal costs at Buffalo for originating and terminating such movements. SMALL ROAD, BIG TRAIN: In pointing out how subsidized highways offset inherently high truck costs, President E. Spencer Miller of Maine Central noted that he recently ran a 220car (139 loads, 81 empties) freight behind four diesel units between Bangor and Portland for a crew cost of about $166. By highway such a load would have entailed drivers' wages totaling $2400. MORE OF THE SAME: Engineer, fireman, and truck driver died August 24 when Wabash train No. 2, Detroit Limited, moving 70 mph hit an 11,000-gallon Standard Oil gasoline rig.

ing in each others' skulls over whether or not the I.C.C.'s subsidy message undermines the capitalistic system.

Safest

Winners of the American Museum of Safety's coveted E. H. Harriman Memorial Award gold medals were announced at a September 20 dinner in Washington, D.C. The 1960 winners, for having the best over-all safety records of lines operating both freight and passenger services, were, as ranked by size, UP, Central of Georgia, and DM&IR.

Regarding mergers

Chesapeake & Ohio and the road it wants to control, Baltimore & Ohio, got warm under the collar as New York Central- which wants a three-way merger

made its financial plight an issue during I.C.C. hearings. C&O-B&O called an immediate three-way merger "impossible" because of Central's losses and debts, debunked talk that they could rob NYC of any traffic, and even declared that by shoring up a staggering segment of Eastern railroading, C&O-B&O would "actually benefit Central in time." Central was having none of it and won New York Port Authority approval of its bid as well as the O.K. of the most famous name either side has produced: Gov. Nelson Rockefeller of New York State. Southern Pacific (which wants control of Western Pacific over Great Northern's objections) has intervened in the socalled Hill Lines merger (GN, NP, CB&Q, SP&S) but not in outright opposition. Espee just wants to be sure it will keep on receiving as much connecting traffic as it does now. . . . Meanwhile, the railroad Brotherhoods have asked the I.C.C. either to dismiss the proposed Great Northern Pacific & Burlington Lines merger petition or to postpone hearings from a scheduled September 19 to no earlier than May 1, 1962. . . . If Norfolk & Western is permitted to merge with Nickel Plate and control Wabash, the old established names will not vanish The newcomers to the fold will become the Nickel Plate and Wabash regions of N&W. Says N&W's Stuart Saunders: "We do not intend to let these respected symbols of reliable railroading disappear from the scene." Meantime, yet another line asked into N&W without an invitation: the 171-mile Akron, Canton & Youngstown. AC&Y's contention is that the alternative is "complete encirclement and ultimate suffocation." . . . Little 862-mile Chicago & Eastern Illinois remains very much in the eligible column. Missouri Pacific, now credited with more than 14 per cent of C&EI's voting stock, wants I.C.C. to reject the bid of Louisville & Nashville, which has bought more than 90,000 shares (prudently placing same in trusteeship) and aims for C&EI control. Says L&N: The fact that Mopac has also bought in does not, in L&N's estimation, "present a conflict between the two companies."

Passenger notes

Add Bangor & Aroostook to the freightonly list. BAR dropped its last round