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Trains Magazine 1961 May Mexicano Dirge for the Doodlebug
Trains Magazine 1961
May 1961Volume 21 Number 7
NEWS-5
NEWS PHOTOS8
MEXICANO!15
DIRGE FOR THE DOODLEBUG26
WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT? -33
SPEED---34
ROUND THE WORLD - 436
PHOTO SECTION42
FOR SALE52
Railway post office 54Second section 54
Running extra54Interchange58
SOME MERGER MISGIVINGS
I.WHAT follows is not intended for
the aid and comfort of those who oppose all railroad mergers, per se. Indeed, it is precisely because mergers make sense that we are distressed at the industry's failure to follow St. Paul's injunction (I Cor. 14:40): "Let all things be done decently and in order." Instinct ought to warn us that some sort of I.C.C. master consolidation plan is not the answer; there's too much Government in railroading as it is. But surely there should be a greater communion among the carriers themselves. There is scant evidence in the following items to indicate that the roads involved think of themselves as members of an interdependent industry:
The most critical area of U. S. railroading and hence the region in direst need of consolidation savings-New England - is without a merger plan. The roads there attempted and defaulted on a merger, mainly we gather because the various security holders involved could not decide which line would go bankrupt first. It is difficult to reconcile the fact that certain New England roads are home owned and others are controlled from Park Avenue or Montreal; and it's obvious that Alpert and McGinnis are beset with passenger woes that no longer bother Maine Central or Rutland. Still, some outsider is going to ask why the good merger patent medicine wasn't prescribed first for the patient nearest death; and what are we going to tell him?
If The most obvious thing in 1961 railroad news is that the East is headed for a two-system map composed of (1) Pennsy and its satellites; and (2) everybody else. One unfortunate result is the ungentlemanly Jay Gould-like bidding for Baltimore & Ohio by Chesapeake & Ohio and New York Central. Another regrettable consequence is the plight of freshly merged Erie-Lackawanna, which wants no part of B&O-C&O-NYC, yet discovers it isn't wanted in the Pennsy camp. (And, for that matter, what of the famous and interdependent "Alphabet" freight route which leaves tidewater over B&O-controlled Western Maryland, passes through independent middleman Pittsburgh & West Virginia, and winds up on Nickel Plate, which has agreed to merge with Pennsy-controlled N&W?) All this maneuvering may delight the financial editors but it proves little for railroad statesmanship and confirms our belief that the Eastern Railroad Presidents Conference should have put out the fire before it began when E.R.P.C. had a chance back in 1959.
Elsewhere: The bittersweet on-again, off-again romance of Milwaukee and
North Western continues to smolder, but assuming it catches fire, what then? Surely no final merger map will find these two comparatively weak grangers able to go it alone. . . . The squabble over whether Santa Fe or SP gets Western Pacific is so delicate that neither buyer dares ask for an outright merger, yet the implications are so profound that 2000 miles distant we hear rumors that UP has bought up 8 per cent of Rio Grande common. . . . And there's Coast Line which quite naturally, if unrealistically, wants its cake and wants to eat it too; that is, it wishes to merge with parallel Seaboard without losing control of L&N, a circumstance everyone in the South from GM&O to Southern finds intolerable.
Already the Brotherhoods have decided to protest all mergers, per se; the Justice Department wants to sit in on I.C.C. hearings; the Commission itself is beginning to narrow its eyes; and, expectedly, certain Congressmen are clearing their throats and oiling up their mimeograph machines. Which is to say that the railroads are going to have their hands full persuading the public of the validity of mergers without engaging in fisticuffs themselves over the issue.
The fireman symbol
The Presidential work-rules commission must investigate and report on many areas of railroad operation by December 1, but the symbolic issue is apt to remain whether or not the fireman has anything to do aboard a diesel.
He does not, argued the management reps on the 16-man commission. They imported witnesses from near and far. Chief Engineer T. B. Dilworth of Electro-Motive said that "in our opinion a fireman, helper, assistant engineer, or whatever you prefer to call him is not needed from a mechanical standpoint to move a diesel-electric locomotive over the road." The chief of the Netherlands Railways, J. P. Koster, said that in his country both freight and passenger trains operate with only an engineer in the cab and that not even a conductor or trainman is employed on freights of less than 16 cars. Former fireman W. D. Quarles Jr., now Director of Labor Relations for Coast Line, said that a diesel fireman does either nothing or little things for the engineer or brakeman; that too many men in the cab distract the engineer; and that "it is very disheartening to other employees when they observe a fireman sitting on the left side of the locomotive with nothing to do and earning more money than they do." Continued on page 9
HOW TO SPELL SPEED
MOST of us are intrigued with the fact of speed, I think; why else 999 and Casey Jones and Super Chief? But how do we spell out momentum in the magazine so that it becomes believable, visible, firsthand? In many ways. Last month, for example, Tom Miller defined speed rather well in an after-dark panned broadside of a Canadian Pacific 2-8-2; and next month speed expert Don Steffee details speed in statistics and what they mean. On pages 34-35 of this issue Jim Scribbins tries another tack. You could call it a word poem, perhaps; an attempt to re-create on a typewriter what a rail-oriented man (you or I, say) would feel when riding a Hi at 100 mph. We think he's managed the trick.
COVER: Three-cylinder FCM Pacific 136 gets a dose of lube oil at Apizaco. Stan Kistler photo.
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