On the Way to

These June nights, when the drawn-out whistle of the steam engine streaking across Kansas sets the farmer's dog a-barking, or when valley dwellers hear her coming round the mountain with brakes on after the two-engined chuff up the Continental Divide, like as not the long string of cars will be sleepers--Pullmans full of soldiers, destination and route secret.

In World War I, U.S. railroads used four times as many day coaches as Pullmans to haul troops, and at night a doughboy usually had to fold himself up to rest on a dusty, red-plush day-coach seat. Today's soldiers travel across the U.S. two in a lower berth, one in an upper.* The Army now gets 28 Pullmans for each coach. The War Department's Services of Supply gives other reasons than comfort for preferring Pullman travel: 1) when troops move at night by sleeper, nobody is the wiser; 2) civilian rail traffic is lighter at night and trains make better time.

How many troops have been shipped by rail is a prime military secret. But whatever the number, Pullman has accommodated between two-thirds and three-fourths of them. Meanwhile, civilian Pullman travel has increased 25-30%.

Of its 6,000 sleepers, 1,000 diners and club cars, the Pullman Co. has regularly set aside 1,500 cars for troop transport. On peak days the Army had used as many as 2,900 cars--113,000 men, 39 to a car. As of last week, the company figured that its cars in use were occupied 50-50 by civilians and the military. Civilians can still get their lowers if they do a little planning ahead, but when the pinch comes Army & Navy will push civilians right out of the flossiest streamliners. Says the Pullman Co.: "Every car we own is a troop car."

Added to the need for extra cars is the difficulty created by inability of the services to order cars far in advance. Instead of an order for a lower to Washington on the 6:15 next week, the old-fashioned Pullman office in Chicago now takes in its stride an order for 212 cars to be at Great Lakes Naval Training Station by 3 p.m. tomorrow.

* Navy and Marine Corps are fussier, assign only one man to a lower.

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