No Stop at Chicago

Among railroadmen, Alleghany Corp.'s Bob Young has been as popular as a bee in a bridal bouquet. Particularly annoying has been his constant buzzing in the public's ear about the horse & buggy way of running transcontinental trains so that passengers must change at Chicago. Last week he was at it again in full-page newspaper ads(see cut): "A hog can cross the country without changing trains--but YOU can't."

U.S. railroads were stung into action. The Pennsylvania and New York Central, worried about Young and air competition, grudgingly admitted that they are working out plans with a dozen western lines for through service between New York and the West Coast.

The technical problem of sending cars through Chicago can be solved. Railroads have always sent freight cars through, sent many a troop train through during the war. The biggest problem has been finding the passenger traffic to make it pay. Before the war, too few transcontinental passengers a day wanted to travel through Chicago without stopping. Now, under Young's needling, railroads have found that traffic has increased enough.

The tentative plan calls for either a through train daily to various coast cities, e.g., Monday to Los Angeles, Tuesday to San Francisco, or through cars attached to regular trains. In either case, the through train, or the cars, will pull into one Chicago terminal, then be shunted to a western road by way of Chicago's complicated maze of belt lines and yards. Fastest time for the cross-country trip will be cut from 67 hours to 59 hours.

The new service will go into effect as soon as equipment is available. Best guess: six to eight months.

Bob Young still hopes to set up his own through Pullman service. The Department of Justice gave him encouragement last week when it asked the U.S. Supreme Court to ban the sale of the Pullman Co. to a combination of 52 railroads. Although the sale had been approved by a District Court as a method of dissolving Pullman's monopoly, Justice argued that this would merely set up a new monopoly. Justice's candidate for ownership of the Pullmans: Bob Young.

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