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Trains Magazine 1956 December Steam in Indian Summer Casey called it a cabin
Trains Magazine 1956 December Steam in Indian Summer
64 Pages
Cover by Jim Shaughnessy
NEWS - -5
NEWS PHOTOS -8
4 TO 12 SHIFT -14
1,000,000,000 COMMUTERS16
STEAM IN INDIAN SUMMER26
PHOTO SECTION-31
TRAINS TURNTABLE -44
CASEY CALLED IT A CABIN46
TRAINS TRIPMASTER49
BARRIGER'S BIBLE -53
TEN BEST BOOKS? --58
Of books & trains59Second section64
Railway post office 62Running extra66
Interchange66
THE GREAT DEBATE
LAST YEAR the passenger trains of U. S. railroads grossed just 11.2 cents of the industry's revenue dollar - but you'd think otherwise to judge from all of the news, comment, and just plain old tub-thumping on the subject in recent weeks. The time had arrived when, temporarily at least, anybody who was anybody had better have an opinion, because a reporter was apt to show up with his notebook open. What sparked the commotion was, of course, a petition by six Eastern roads (notably New York Central and Pennsylvania) to raise first-class fares 45 per cent and coach fares 5 per cent.
Upset by "misstatements" that his road wants out of the passenger business, President James M. Symes of Pennsylvania sat down and had a three-page chat with employees in the house organ Pennsy. He told them that (1) Pennsy couldn't get out of the business if it wanted to; (2) there is "confusion and misguided discussion" over the I.C.C. formula of allocating costs but overhead is overhead and must be met; (3) "scrapping is not the answer" to obtaining a return on the three-quarters of a billion dollars Pennsy has tied up in passenger plant; and (4) the money spent on new cars, reservation bureaus, station overhaul, etc., is evidence the road will be in the business "in a big way for many years."
Well, then, what is the trouble? Symes said flatly that the airlines were still in Federal care; "within hours of the recent collision of two airlines over the Grand Canyon, the pressure was on for more taxpayer dollars." On-line, Symes said that in many places Pennsy was serving a busload of people with a train; average occupancy runs 12.5 in parlor cars, 21.7 in sleepers, 25 in coaches. Finally, while prices have shot up ("twenty-five years ago we could buy a locomotive for $42,000; today, one unit costs six times as much") the basic coach fare is the same as 25 years ago and Pullman fares run only 31 per cent more than in 1931.
Yes, said Symes, he thought a 45 per cent first-class fare hike was drastic. It would dry up demand for Pullman space in marginal areas but would not hurt a train like the Broadway. Perhaps one of the five through New York-Chicago trains could be cut off. The coach increase was "modest" and would increase revenues by more than two million dollars. Summing up, Symes said the final answer was to get three times as much revenue per train as the road did 25 years ago and "the best way to do this is to have three times as many passengers on a train as the average coach train did then - and in many places this is possible." Pennsy, then, has to concentrate on heavy volume travel conducted on a
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