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Trains Magazine 1959 February Short Line Special
Trains Magazine 1959 February
February 1959Volume 19 Number 4
NEWS - - - - 5
NEWS PHOTOS ---8
LIZARD HEAD PASS --16
LOGGING LINE ---18
SHORT-LINE QUIZ.26
SHORT-LINE STEAM --28
I RENTED A RAILROAD-40
WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT? -47
I DON'T LIKE SHORT LINES48
Railway post office 52Second section56
Of books and trains 55Running extra57
Interchange57
COVER: Robert Hale's camera records crew conversation at side of Sierra Ten-Wheeler No. 6.
A HARD LOOK AT THE I.C.C.
RAILROAD men are very polite people, sometimes too polite.
In those Senate subcommittee hearings last year President Robert S. Macfarlane of the Northern Pacific said of the Interstate Commerce Commission, "I know of no commission in American Government of higher integrity," and President Russell L. Dearmont of Missouri Pacific echoed, "I am not criticizing the I.C.C. . . . I think they do a good job." Said President Ernest Marsh of Santa Fe: "I think it is a good Commission. I think they are doing a conscientious job."
It would be unlikely if these executives had rapped the I.C.C. over the knuckles. No prudent person makes faces at the cop on the corner. Moreover, it is possible to compliment the Commission with a clean conscience. It has been notably free to date of the scandal which has attached itself to other Federal regulatory agencies. And the oft-expressed opinion that the Commission is understaffed and overworked is demonstrably true.
But it is also true that the Interstate Commerce Commission tends to be an obstinate old lady of an agency, jealous of its powers and resistant to change. Its proudest possession is impartiality and its cherished objective is the status quo. Historically, the I.C.C. can't help but wear a stern expression. It was created by Congress in 1887 to police a lusty, often violent young railroad industry which, at that time, virtually monopolized U. S. transportation. It gradually acquired powers not only to regulate competition (i.e., rate control) but also to referee mergers and abandonments, safety practices and appliances, accounting rules, line extensions, securities, equipment interchange, ad infinitum. So long as railroading remained a monopoly the I.C.C. was a wise, beneficial force - for the country and for the industry. Since then, however, all this has taken place:
If The advent of road and water competition has shrunk the railroads' share of intercity freight traffic to 46.4 per cent.
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