Winter Woes

Heavy snows, high winds and subnormal temperatures last week brought Eastern railroads--and their chilled passengers--their worst disaster in years. Nine inches of snow piled up in Manhattan, 13 inches in Philadelphia, and 14 inches in Washington, D.C., and no icicle-encrusted Lower Slobbovians were ever more solidly snowbound. Groaned one passenger who spent 13 1/2 hours (instead of four) between Washington and New York: "A few inches of snow--and blooey."

"Blooey" was right. Every one of the major lines serving the Atlantic Coast from Washington to Boston was hard hit.. As drifting snow buried tracks and zero cold froze engines and switches, the New York Central, the New Haven, the Erie and many other commuter lines ran hours late. Trains loaded with commuters got stalled in the fields, and rescue trains sent out after them got stalled too. The New York Central reported its long-haul trains running between New York and Chicago as much as 20 hours late. Each delay produced a paralyzing chain reaction. The day after the storm, a collision between two empty trains on the New Haven near Port Chester, N.Y. held up 15 following trains, packed with 3,000 commuters, for as much as eight hours. No sooner was that mess cleared up than two more derailments on successive days snarled the New Haven all over again. In jampacked stations along the coast, schedules and timetables became meaningless. Only a few trains held to the luxury of dining cars--and these soon ran out of everything, including water.

Virtual Standstill. Of them all, the Pennsylvania Railroad had the toughest time. Four days after the storm, the Pennsy was still barely able to run 22 of its 74 daily trains between New York and Philadelphia, only 14 of the 53 trains normally operating between New York and Washington. Service between New York and Cleveland was at a virtual standstill. At one time or another, almost every one of the line's 139 electric engines was out of service. Unlike the engines on other lines, the Pennsy's GG1 locomotives have air-intake screens of imported French linen that blocked out heavy flakes but could not keep out the fine, windblown crystals. Sifting into the electrical system, the snow melted and short-circuited everything. Mechanics had to remove every water-soaked unit, dry it by hand. Said one Pennsy executive: "We were prepared for cornflakes, but we got hit by talcum powder."

Airlift. All told during the seven-day stretch most Pennsylvania trains were either canceled or late, and so much mail (4,000,000 pieces) piled up that the post office organized an emergency airlift of four airlines to move it south and west. The great trouble, said Pennsy Vice President J. Benton Jones, was "under-maintenance." Most of the stalled engines were between 15 and 23 years old, many of them the same engines that broke down under similar conditions during the winter of 1942-43. Yet the Pennsy cannot afford to buy new engines.

The Pennsy's wintertime problems, and those of its sister roads, were one more symptom of the basic ill health of U.S. railroads. Faced with over-regulation by the Interstate Commerce Commission and increasingly tough competition from trucks and airlines, they have not been able to earn the money they need to keep up the kind of service the U.S. expects and demands. In January, said Pennsylvania President James M. Symes, gross revenues slipped 15.5% from a year ago to $69.4 million, leaving the line with its third monthly deficit ($2,527,222) in a row. And to underscore the point last week, New Haven President George Alpert, who likes to fiddle to take his mind off his road's troubles, announced that the New Haven's finances were so poor it could not pay some $2,000,000 interest charges due May 1 on its 4 1/2% general mortgage bonds. Instead it will defer the payment, write its stockholders an IOU, and hope for better times --while the unpaid interest accumulates, thus making the eventual reckoning just that much steeper.

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