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RAILROADS
The Breaking Point
In their
desperate effort to move more troops than ever before, on top of holiday
crowds, U.S. railroads have spread men and equipment paper thin.
Last week they snapped in a dozen places. On the Pacific coast
veterans overflowed regular military installations and had to be quartered
in ships tied to piers while they waited from four to six days for east
bound trains. In the San Francisco area alone, more than 50,000
homesick G.I.s sweated out Christmas. The problem there was getting
the railroad cars to the West Coast over the spindly western
railroads. To do the job, the eastern roads stripped themselves to
pool some 2,000 passenger cars. On the Western Pacific, long strings
of New Haven and Boston and Maine commuter coaches deadheaded through
Feather River Canyon, far from home. Lehigh Valley and Florida East
Coast coaches swayed and rattled over the Rockies on the single tracks of
the Great Northern and the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific.
Still there was nowhere near enough cars to move the
329,000 troops now pouring into the country each week, along with hordes
of holidaying civilians who were gadding about as never before.
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And then the staggering railroads in the east and middle west were knocked
to their knees by the heaviest burden of all: a record breaking
blizzard. The New York Central's Gardenville yards, a key
point just outside of Buffalo, were buried under five feet of snow.
In one day, only two freight trains managed to pull out of Gardenville,
which normally handles 50 to 60 trains a day. At sidings throughout
the north and east, tired, cursing railroadmen struggled to throw switches
half covered with snow and ice, kept on the job 16 hours a day.
Thousands of men were recruited to dig out the railroads.
Crack passenger trains limped into terminals as much as
20 hours late. In Chicago's Dearborn station, some 15,000 civilians
stampeded to get aboard trains, lost shoes and baggage in the
struggle. City and military police were called on the double-quick
to quell the riot. The New York Central Railroad stopped the sale of
all tickets on trains eastbound from Chicago. In Washington's
Union Station, "recesses" were called for hour periods to help
clear the jampacked station. All over, passengers missed
connections, had no choice but to camp in stations.
By week's end, railroads had just about dug their way
out of the piled-up drifts. But the outlook was grim.
Hollow-eyed, bone-tired railroaders who paused long enough to look at
their calendars found that officially winter was but a few days old.
Snow and Ice, worst of all their troubles, had just begun. |
