After Loree

Last week neat, genial Joseph H. Nuelle was elected president of Delaware & Hudson Co. to take the place of untidy, scowling Leonor Loree, who retired a month ago. Mr. Loree had run Delaware & Hudson since 1907, same year that Joe Nuelle (pronounced Nelly) started work for New York, Ontario & Western. While Mr. Loree was maneuvering Delaware & Hudson into a national prominence not strictly deserved by its present 847 miles of trackage, Mr. Nuelle was persistently working his way up from assistant engineer to principal assistant engineer to engineer of maintenance of way to chief engineer to general manager to president in 1930.

Meantime Mr. Loree had completed the coup of his life: D. & H. had bought into the Wabash and Lehigh Valley lines for strategic reasons, and when ICC ordered it to sell (Pennsylvania R. R. was only too happy to buy) there was a profit of $20,700,000. In 1932 Mr. Nuelle's O. & W., familiarly known on the Stock Exchange as the Old Woman, was one of the country's 19 Class I roads (among which D. & H. was not included) making money. Then Mr. Loree made the blunder of his life: He used part of the Wabash and Lehigh Valley profits to buy 495,000 shares (10%) of New York Central. He bought at $22 and held it. It reached $55 a year ago, is now $13--and there are convincing rumors that D. & H. is taking its loss and selling.

Things are not so good for the Old Woman either. Last year Joe Nuelle left her to become president of Lehigh Coal & Navigation Co. and shortly afterward, she filed under Section 77 of the Bankruptcy Act. There is another rumor around the Stock Exchange and roundhouses: She may be divided up piece by piece among other Eastern roads, and a large piece will go to Delaware & Hudson.

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