The Pride of Peoria

In the 103 years since its founding, Illinois' tiny (239 miles) Toledo, Peoria & Western has made lots of news, most of it bad. Long known by such names as the "Tired, Poor & Weary," the T.P. & W. was twice thrown into receivership, three times sold at auction, and has to its debit one of the nation's worst railroad disasters (81 killed). After World War II, a long and bitter strike resulted in the shotgun killing of two strikers (TIME, Feb. 18, 1946). In 1947, T.P. & W.'s anti-union President George McNear Jr. was himself killed by a shotgun blast in a still unsolved murder.

But last week T.P. & W.'s President John Russel Coulter, 52, who took over soon after McNear's death, reported some good news--about the best in the little railroad's unhappy career. From a $3,600,000 deficit four years ago, he had pulled T.P. & W.'s net up to $742,000 in 1951, paid out $825,000 in dividends and more than, $2,000,000 in income, inheritance and other taxes. At the news, McNear estate executors decided that their job was done. They voted to turn over the railroad to estate trustees, and ask the ICC for permission to split T.P. & W.'s 50 shares of stock outstanding, now 82% owned by the McNear estate, 1,600 for one.

When Russ Coulter became president, the T.P. & W. "not only had grass over the rails but, thanks to the spring floods, water as well." Headquarters was a rented office in Peoria's dingy Union Station; customers were practically nonexistent. Equipment was run down and morale was low. Russ Coulter, a Colby College graduate and a veteran railroader from the St. Louis-San Francisco ("Frisco") Railway Co., perked things up. Soon firemen were out on the tracks, voluntarily working at laborers' wages to put the roadbed in shape.

Coulter borrowed $250,000 for new equipment, hustled business from such big shippers as Quaker Oats, U.S. Gypsum and Armour, reopened 20 freight offices across the country, and started informing shippers by postcard on every movement of their freight. He raised wages to standard rates, set up a management-labor suggestion committee, spruced up cabooses with new coats of paint, good toilet facilities, even outlets for electric razors.

The work force swelled to 600, and morale improved so much that the T.P. & W.'s employees were the only railroaders in Illinois who did not walk out on the "sickness" strike last year. Now entirely dieselized with 15 new locomotives, the T.P. & W. has one of the best transportation ratios (cost to gross revenue) in the U.S.; last year it was 22% v. a 36% national average. T.P. & W. also gets more freight mileage out of its diesels (11,000 miles apiece per month) than almost every other railroad. Once-scornful railroaders have a new description of the Tired, Poor & Weary: "Trim, Peppy & Wealthy."

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