Schedule Cutting

In a snippy editorial one day last week, the Chicago Tribune complained that the New York Central's Twentieth Century and the Pennsylvania's Broadway Limited were too slow, demanded "overnight service of 15 hours" between New York and Chicago. Next day, by a coincidence, the New York Central and the Pennsylvania joined in announcing that on Sept. 29 they would cut the schedule of their two crack trains from 17 hours to a new record of 16 1/2.

When, on the same day in 1902, the two railroads launched these rival limiteds, the schedule was a breathtaking 20 hours. Lately, however, airplane and streamline rivalry forced a succession of cuts--first to 18, then to 17 3/4, finally, last April, to 17 hours flat. The two trains can go faster, but railway officials know that density of population, roadbeds, grade-crossings make a 15-hr. schedule too dangerous to be warranted.

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