Word: railroads
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Later that night, some of the local radicals assemble in a rickety frame house by the railroad tracks, amid scented candles and tequila. They do not seem especially traitorous: a dozen people in their 20s, a young minister, some teachers, some Vista and other OEO workers. The stories about trouble in El Dorado spill out: kids busted for selling an underground paper, a teacher dismissed for his unorthodox ways, poor people and blacks (El Dorado has only a few) deprived of their rightful unemployment benefits. The complaints are utterly earnest, sincere, not negligible-yet not major, either. One feels that...
Power companies blame the problem on various unusual circumstances. For one, there is a shortage of both coal and available coal-carrying railroad cars. For another, natural gas-the best alternative fuel-is in even tighter supply. And, conservationists' lawsuits have slowed the construction of nuclear power plants, which may cause thermal pollution and radiation dangers. If such obstacles could be overcome, the companies imply, there would be no crisis. But there is far more to the problem...
...plain as a red signal on the main track, the ominous figures in quarterly earnings reports showed for months that the Penn Central Transportation Co. was in precarious financial condition. The nation's largest railroad and its parent corporation, the Penn Central Co., are among the wealthiest companies in the U.S. (assets: $7 billion). But the railroad is burdened with debt, beset by spiral ing costs, tangled operations, a drop in freight shipments and the $100 million annual drain of unwanted passenger service. As a result, a convulsion last week shook the once-mighty Penn Central and spread deep...
...Chairman and Chief Executive Stuart T. Saunders, Vice Chairman Alfred Perlman and Finance Committee Chairman David Bevan. Next day, fearful that the collapse of so large a corporation might bring down other companies in the shaky economy, the Nixon Administration took unusual action in order to rescue the ailing railroad from the brink of bankruptcy. Under seldom-used powers of the Defense Production Act, the Defense Department agreed to guarantee up to $200 million in short-term bank loans for the road...
...freight charges. (Last week the torpid Interstate Commerce Commission finally approved a 5% increase in freight rates that Saunders bagan begging for last winter.) In two years, the cost of a new freight car rose 37% and the payroll went up by 18%. Despite revenues of $1.8 billion, the railroad lost $56.3 million in 1969. The company fared even worse in this year's first quarter. Staggered by severe winter weather, rising local taxes, declining factory output, and strikes in coal and other industries, the line posted a $62.7 million operating loss...