Keep Them Traveling

If everybody wants to go somewhere for the Fourth of July weekend, no railroadman dares to think of the mess. And they all dread the effect on their future business, since it would underline the popular misconception that the roads cannot handle their normal passenger load on top of the gargantuan troop movements (2,500,000 troops in sleepers alone in five months) they have to handle first.

Fact is that, with the exception of travel to Washington and a few other bottlenecks, practically every railroad could handle a good many more passengers than it carries now. Passenger business is up 50%, which means that the average passenger car is carrying only 24 people (last year's average: 16) v. a capacity of up to 80 for coaches, 30 for Pullmans. That is a lot more per car than they averaged last year, but it is still a long way from standing-room-only. What it does mean is a lot of people in uppers who would like to be in bedrooms, in coaches instead of in parlor cars. It also means, in many areas, that Pullman passengers must make up their minds from a day to several weeks ahead as to when they want to go where, and that many trains have been running on slower schedules to give themselves time to take on more customers and make more stops.

But, barring troop movements on a hitherto unheard-of scale, there is still no evidence that travel by rail must be limited to essential trips. Most railroaders agree with the harried Union Pacific official who held his head last week and groaned: "Our dispatchers are collecting the damnedest set of ulcers you ever saw . . . but the only thing we have had to do is to tell some of these guys that, if they don't mind an upper, they can have it now. That's all it has really meant--changing the habits of the way people travel, but keeping them traveling."

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