Biggest & Worst

After one ride on the Long Island Rail Road, the average man has difficulty talking. After two he cannot stop. If he is a newly hatched commuter, he indulges in shocked and vehement tirades against the road's rickety locomotives, its profane and belligerent trainmen, its aged and odoriferous cars. If he is a veteran, he may speak of the Long Island almost admiringly--like a wife-beater's bride telling the girls how her husband knocked her into the china closet. But, young or old, he shares with his fellow commuters one vibrating conviction: that it is the worst railroad in the world.

Since it is also the nation's biggest commuter road (it carries 110,000 people daily between Long Island's suburban reaches and Manhattan's echoing Pennsylvania Station), it has probably been cursed more consistently than any other institution in the history of man. But last month it stirred its critics to new heights. As New York's record 25.8-inch snowfall descended, the Long Island got mired down like a cow in quicksand. It marooned 3,500 people in icy day coaches, and did not completely extricate itself for six long days.

Filthy Cars. Last week, throngs of still-throbbing commuters gathered at a public hearing in Manhattan to vent their pent-up spleen, and to demand reforms. One witness complained that he had spent twelve hours in a cold train and had been forced to eat snow off the window sills "to moisten my throat." He could hardly be heard; he explained, hoarsely, that he had caught a horrible cold in the process.

One Reid A. Curtis of Merrick, L.I. testified that the conductor of a stalled train had directed passengers to get out into the snow if they didn't like the service. The railroad's attorney interrupted: "Do you mean that a Long Island employee used those words to you--get out?" Said Curtis: "Well--no. He said, 'Get the hell out.'"

Though the hearing was supposed to concern itself only with the storm, dozens of witnesses talked wildly of doors which stuck and trains which ran late, of "filthy cars and broken-down locomotives." The hall rang with applause and whistling as one witness cried: "These people should be indicted for criminal negligence."

Clean Windows. The Long Island, however, seemed unimpressed. Its superintendent, Eugene L. Hofmann, blandly blamed the tie-up on inadequate reporting by the weather bureau. He also boasted a little. In the snarled-up days of the Big Snow, not a single person had been killed, he said. The Long Island's pressagent announced: "We take the philosophic view. It's no good to lose your temper. I didn't even get mad when some U.N. official called up and wanted to punch me in the nose."

This did not mean, .however, that the Long Island Rail Road was totally unmoved by the hearing, nor completely un-solicitous of the comfort of its restive passengers. At week's end it hastily washed the windows on several of its trains. This was an astonishing concession, but it sent thousands of riders home with severe eyestrain contracted during their first view of the fleeting countryside.

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